Talk:Origin of the Romanians

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Old version of the article, "written by Hungarians", supposedly

The Romanians (also sometimes referred to along with other Balkan Latin peoples as Vlachs) are a people speaking Romanian, a Romance language, and living in Central and Eastern Europe. The Origin of the Romanians has been disputed for some time and there are two basic theories:

1. Daco-Romanian continuity in Dacia, Moesia and some adjacent regions.
2. Migration of Romanic peoples from former Roman provinces south of the Danube in the Balkans (The Rösler Theory).

The exact region where the Romanian language and people formed is not only a scientific puzzle, but also a heated political controversy. 19th-century Hungarian historians largely supported the migration theory, which maintained that Transylvania was not inhabited by Romanians at the time of the Magyar conquests in central Europe during the 10th century. Most Romanian historians support the theory of Daco-Romanian continuity and maintain that Transylvania was continuously inhabited by the ancestors of Romanians. The debate was politically charged in the 19th-20th centuries because of territorial conflicts concerning Transylvania between Romania and Hungary.

More recently, as former axioms of ethnogenesis have shifted, the historian Walter Pohl noted that "centuries after the fall of the Balkan provinces, a pastoral Latin-Roman tradition served as the point of departure for a Valachian-Roman ethnogenesis. This kind of virtuality — ethnicity as hidden potential that comes to the fore under certain historical circumstances — is indicative of our new understanding of ethnic processes. In this light, the passionate discussion for or against Roman-Romanian continuity has been misled by a conception of ethnicity that is far too inflexible."

Daco-Romanian continuity

Romanian continuity and migrations

After the Romans conquered Dacia in 106, a process of romanization of the Dacians took place. The Roman administration retreated from Dacia around 271, and according to this theory, the romanized Dacians stayed on, and have continuously lived in Dacia throughout the Dark Ages. Romanians are their descendants.

Arguments for

• Extensive Roman colonization of Dacia.
• The colonists came from different provinces of the Roman empire. They had no common language except for Vulgar Latin. In this multi-ethnic environment, Latin, being the only common language of communication, might have quickly become the dominant language. American history furnishes similar examples, with the overwhelming dominance of Standard English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese in different parts of the Americas, with insignificant dialectal differences.
• Dacian toponyms were kept; examples are the names of some rivers (Samus - SomeÅŸ, Marisia - MureÅŸ, Porata - Prut) and the names of some cities (Petrodava - Piatra NeamÅ£, Abruttum - Abrud).
• Some morpho-syntactic, lexical and phonetical regional differences within Romanian indicate that in certain regions of Romania the language preserved more Latin substance than in the rest of the country. The boundaries of these linguistic areas coincide quite exactly with the borders of the ancient Roman province of Dacia, encompassing modern Transylvania, Banat and Oltenia.

The existence of a stronger Latin heritage in the territories of the ancient Roman Dacia is explained by the intense Romanisation of these territories, which formed core areas of Romanian. The uninterrupted and isolated existence of a Romanised population living there ensured a conservative transmission of this Latin heritage across generations. From these core areas Romanian spread over the Carpathians, meanwhile losing a little of its Latin substance. The general dissemination into Romanian of words of Magyar origin supports the theory of the Romanian diffusion from Transylvanian core areas across the Carpathians.

• The similarity between the current Romanian traditional clothes and the Dacian clothes, as depicted on Trajan's Column.
• Constantine the Great assumed the title Dacicus Maximus in 336 just like Trajan did in 106, suggesting the presence of Dacians in Dacia even after the Aurelian withdrawal of 270-275.
• Numerous archaeological sites prove the continuity of Latin settlements north of the Danube after the evacuation of 271, including:
  • Daco-Roman ceramic artifacts from the 5th-6th centuries, found at: Bratei, Soporu de Câmpie, VerbiÅ£a, SÇŽrata Monteoru
  • Christian tombs and objects found at: Cluj-Napoca, Alba-Iulia, Biertan, Dej
  • Walls erected in the 4th century at Sarmizegetusa

The Biertan Donarium (IVth century A. Chr.)

• • Many inscriptions in the Latin language: inscriptions on silver ring from Micia, ceramic objects from Porolissum, brick found at Gornea, inscription on bronze object found at Biertan (reading "EGO ZENOVIUS VOTUM POSUI").
• The Byzantines were the most advanced people of this era, yet somehow they never recorded any migration of Vlachs from their lands.They documented the movement of even populations as small as a tribe of 500 Cumans, and yet, they overlooked the migration of thousands of Vlachs who decided to simply give up their livelihood in the South and flee to the North.
• Romanians share the name Vlach/Voloch and Olah/Olasz with Italians meaning the Hungarians and Slavs tought are one and the same populace.

• If the Romanians had been living alongside Albanians before the Xth century, they would have more in common than a few words: they would have a communal language (as affirmed by the Bulgarian linguist Decev). The phonological disunity between the shared words also evidences that these words are inherited from a common sub-stratum (Thraco-Illyrian) and not the result of having a shared geographical region of origin.

• The name Vlach is a name for Romanians used only by the Southern Slavs. the Eastern Slavs call Romanians Voloch which fits Eastern Slavic phonology. If the Eastern Slavs met the Romanians after the Southern Slavs (which would have happened had the Romanians originated South of the Danube) they would have called Romanians "Vlach" as well, borrowing the name from the Southern Slavs. However, the use of the word Voloch shows that the Eastern Slavs encountered the Romanians separately, before the Southern Slavs gave them the Vlach name, and thus, must have been north of the Danube before the Slavic migrations.

• The lack of Germanic elements in Romanian is due largely to the low level of interaction between the Goths and Romanians, as well as the low population of Goths living in the area. The Goths were also present South of the Danube in even greater numbers, and were even brought in by the Romans as refugees, so placing the Romanians South of the Danube does not provide them with any shelter from Gothic influence. From this we conclude that the adoption of Gothic elements in Romanian would have had more to do with the type of interaction between the Goths and proto-Romanians, and not with whether they did or did not live in the same geographic region.

• The lack of documents pertaining to the existence of Romanians North of the Danube before the Xth century is largely due to the fact that the Byzantines, outside of the borders of the Byzantine Empire only recorded populations which they felt had some important political interaction with the Byzantines. For instance, the Avars, after being defeated and greatly weakened, are not mentioned at all north of the Danube between the years 626-743 even though their presence is visible through archaeology. Since the proto-Romanians were under Barbarian domination, they were of no political consequence to the Byzantines, and at best were only mentioned in a few documents before the Xth century. As their political importance grew (with the foundation of the 2nd Bulgarian Empire, interaction with the Pechennegs etc.) so too did the number of Byzantine documents mentioning them.

• The argument that "Colonization of Dacia was not long enough for Romanization to occur" is easily refuted by the fact that acculturation does not have to happen through conquest, and the evidence that the Dacians and Getai were very willing to adopt foreign cultures and languages. For instance, even though Greeks never retained a position of political dominance over the Dacians, there are records that many Dacian tribes had learned to speak Greek just by interacting with the Greek colonies at the coasts of Pontus Euxinus (the Black Sea). At the latest, Dacian and Roman interactions started in 44 B.C., when Burebista sent military aid to Caesar’s enemies.

• While the Romanians north of the Danube were not mentioned earlier than the Xth century, neither is another Latin populace, the Romanche of Switzerland, and neither are the Albanians, yet no one would conclude that these people were somehow absent from the world before this time.

• The absence of Romanians in Hungarian documents before the XI and XII century is that the Magyar state was not developed enough to ensure such high measures of population control, such as censuses or judicial documents. However, many Romanian judicial terms are of Magyar origin, implying that the Romanians were present when these terms were first applied and used by the Hungarian state. The Romanians in Transylvania needed to understand the Magyar judicial system in order to use it, and this explains how such words diffused throughout the Romanian language. If Romanians had not been present in Transylvania before the XII century, then such an absorption would not have been possible, and the terms would have been replaced by Slavic or Greek terms.

• In the earliest documents which affirm the existence of Romanians in Transylvania, all the documents refer to the Romanians living in dense forests. A "charta" given to the Saxons by the Hungarians, the region of Fagaras is called "silva Blacorum et Bissenorum (forest of Vlachs and Pechennegs). If the Romanians were (as is falsely claimed) pastoral migrants from the South, why would they run with their sheep into dense forests? The geographical location of Romanians in Transylvania is more reflective of a populace fleeing into the forests before the invading migratory horsemen. The archaeologist Andrei Popa, now deceased, has also confirmed the presence of numerous other "Vlah sylvae" within Transylvania before they were reorganized in Comites. This same symptom of Romanians living in dense forests is also found south of the Carpathians. Regions like Codrul Vlasiei derive from Vlasca, meaning "Land of Vlachs" in Slavic languages. Vlasi is the plural term for Vlach so we can conclude that this dense forest (codru) would have been the home to the Romanians South of the Carpathians as well, and is once again reflective of a populace trying to flee from horse-bound invaders. The particular use of the word "Vlasi" is an early term, and reflects on the fact that this name was given at a time when Romanians and Slavs had only mingled slightly.
• The name for a type of fuel, "pacura", is derived directly from the Latin "picula". This particular fuel can only arises naturally north of the Danube, particularly in Transylvania, where it was used by the Romans and Dacians. This word is not used in any other Romance languages, surviving only in Romanian.
• The Slavic elements in Romanian are present only in particular words, and not in the grammatical structure or the phonology and structure of words in Romanian. This indicates linguistically that by the time the Slavs mingled with the Romanians, the Latin element in the Romanian language was already solidified, and only a super-stratum of Slavic words, many of which are synonyms for Latin words, could be added.
• The words “Erdo” and “Erdely” are not of Finno-Uguric family and therefore not of Magyar origin, this means they are a corruption of another words . The Romanian word “Ardeal” was corrupted into “Erdel” and “Erdol” meaning “land of forested heights”. From the word Erdely, Erdo was then extracted to describe a simple dense forest, this is confirmed by linguists who have studied Magyar phonology. When a word from Romanian is corrupted into Hungarian,“a” usually becomes “e”, Andreas becomes “Endre”, the Latin “ager’ becomes “eger”,“sant” meaning “saint” in old Romanian becomes “sent”,“agris” becomes “egres” etc. This event also happens with the word Ardeal which at first becomes “Erdel” until 1390, where it is converted to “Erdely”. “Ard” as an Indo-European root-word means “hill, forested heights, mountain” and appears in hundreds of geographic locations, all sharing these topographic characteristics. Examples : Ardal (Iran), Arduba (Albania), Ardnin (Austria), Ardel (Italy), Ardelu (France) etc. Fact confirmed in Julius Caesar’s work “De Bello Gallico”, there we can find the phrase “Ardeunna Silva”
• The hydronyms and toponyms in Romania and throughout Transylvania are predominantly carried over from antiquity. Names like Somes, Mures, Abrud, Dunare, Prut, Nistru, all are adaptations of the original Latin, Greek, or Dacian words.

Slavic toponyms and hydronyms are present in Romania, but these are present in many parts of Eastern Europe as well. Many hydronyms and toponyms in mainland Greece are also Slavic, but this does not imply that Slavs were the sole people to populate Greece or Romania.

• The first ruler of Transylvania to be formally recognized by the Kingdom of Hungary was Leustachius, who had the title of “Voievod of Transylvania” as written in G. Wenczel’s Codex Diplomaticus (“Leustachius, waywoda Transilvaniae”). The position of “Voievod” as a formal administrative position was only preserved by the Romanians in the Middle Ages. Transylvania was the only region under the Hungarian crown which kept this administrative rank as the highest rank attainable, rather than being re-organized into Comites as the other regions of Hungary were, by using the title of Voievod, it is evidenced that the Hungarian crown was somehow necessitated to recognize an older political institution in Transylvania. Romanians had used the title of “Voievod” before Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarians and continued to use it afterwards in Wallachia and Moldova, only Romanians retained this title others adopting King, Tzar or Khan.
• The Hungarian word for Christmas, Karacsony, is derived directly from the Old Romanian word for Christmas “Cracion” which is itself derived from the Latin “creation” meaning “birth.” Hungarian phonology elongates the vowel sound between “cr”, resulting in “car”, and since the “C” produces a hard “K” sound, the letter is changed in Hungarian spelling. Phonology then also caused the “ci” to be replaced by “cs”, while still retaining the “ch” phoneme, and finally, a “y” is attached at the end in order to have the word be more homogeneous with the already-existing Hungarian vocabulary. This indicates that the Hungarians were already in contact with the Vlachs when they were Christianized.
• The word Olah does not derive from the Slavic word “Vlah” as replacing the “v” with an “o” has no etymological or phonological explanation. During the Middle Ages, the word “Olah” was used both when referring to Romanians as well as Italians, which shows that the Romanians were very similar to Italians in terms of language, and that the Magyar tribes had encountered both ethnic groups at roughly the same time, in the late 9th and early 10th century, when the Magyars raided Northern Italy. The word “Olasz” now used for all Latinate people except Romanians is a recent phenomenon.
• The chronicle Oguzname, the oldest Turkish chronicle in existence, mentioning a warlike expedition of the Cumans, affirms the existence of a “Country of the Vlachs” (Ulaqi) east of the Carpathians in 839, affirming that the region was well organized and with a powerful army.

• The Romanian batran, meaning “old”, is significant as it does not derive from the Latin equivalent “vetus” (in Italian, Vecchio, in French, Vieux etc.); instead it derives from the Latin word veteranus, referring to a Roman Legionary after he is released from military duty. The reason for this is because of the procedures of Roman colonization. When a village was Romanized, the veterans of the Roman Legion had an important role; because military service was long (twenty-five years), a large part of these Roman legionaries were married, the wives and children having to live nearby the military camps, named canabae. Since many of the legions and auxiliary troops of Rome were to maintain their position permanently in Dacia, it is evident that many of the wives of the soldiers would be indigenous, Dacian. At their release from military service, the legionary was named veteranus, and he would obtain (if he did not have it before) the right to citizenship for himself and his entire family, as well as a piece of land to cultivate. The children of the veterans and the Dacian women were Roman citizens and spoke Latin, but the majority would have known Dacian, their maternal tongue. The children of these children, the grandchildren of the veterans, would be totally Romanized. In two, maximum three generations, the followers of these mixed marriages forgot their indigenous language. Thus the number of veterans in Dacia would have been considerably large, which is why an elder is referred to through exactly this word, batran, derived from veteranus, having been modified through Romanian phonetics. In essence, the system of veteranus would be critical in the Romanization of Dacia, as elderly vetarans, who had now gained rights to property, would have no reason to leave what they had worked for over 25 years to attain. The case here is not about a single wave of veterans under Trajan, but for a continuous series of settlements of veterans which wanted to remain in Dacia.
• The river Tarnava is evidence of the co-existence between the Slavs and Romanians in Translvania described by the chronicler Nestor. Tarnava derives from Slavic trunu, or nail. Since the Hungarians used a different name for the river, “Kukulo”, it would have been impossible for Romanians to use the Slavic name for the river had they arrived after the Magyars (and according to Hungarian history, with a Magyar majority in Transylvania). In such a situation the Romanian name would have been derived from Hungarian, but the fact that it is of Slavic origin attests to Slavs and Romanians living together around the river before the Magyars.

Another important river is Bistrita. Another Slavic word, however influenced by Romanian. Bistrita in Slavic means “the fast one”, in Romanian, this translates into “repedele”. Today, however, the river is officially Bistrita, but known as Repedele by the locals. There are many other instances were the Slavic name replaces the original Romanian name, such as for Nucet, now known as Cozia (from Slavic koza, goat).

Barsa. According to the linguist Sextil Puscariu, this name would derive from the verb “labarta”, dissimilated into “rabartsa”. It is of Traco-Illyiric origin, so it would be impossible for the Romanians to have preserved it had they not originated from such a sub-stratum, and in the geographical region around Barsa. We can conclude that it was taken from the very ancestors of the Romanians. In Geto-Dacian names we also find the radical “bars”.

The river Cerna. Although “cerna” in Slavic means “black”, the river’s waters are clear. The Romanian form is surely influenced from the Latin name Tierna and influenced by Slavic phonetics.

The river Barzava. Another word of Geto-Dacian origin, from the radical bere or berez, meaning white, and its suffix bis, or vis. Possibly also named after a nearby Dacian city, Berzobis.

Turda. The origin of this word is Turri-Dava, from Latin. The name then would be formed from Turris – tower – and dava – citadel.

Abrud. The origin of this name comes from Latin Abruttum, a synonym for gold.

• The majority of Romanian words assumed to be of Dacian origin are not shared with Albanian. Therefore, it is impossible to assume they were adopted from the Albanians or that the Vlachs lived among the Albanians before the 10th century.

• The notion that the withdrawal of Dacia in 271 was a total evacuation is false and cannot be attained from contemporary written sources, nor archaeology or demographics. Hungarian historians have tried to misrepresent the writings of Eutropius and Flavius Vopiscus, saying that when these two authors wrote of a withdrawal from Dacia, they meant a complete abandonment and relocation. The Latin language does not have definite and indefinite articles (no equivalent of the word “The”), and is by default set to the partitioned, indefinite (mentioning a population only speaks of a portion of it, and not all). If there is a need to switch to the definite, in other words, to express themselves precisely and in totality, the use of the adjectives totus or omnis was done historically. As neither Eutropius, nor Flavius Vopiscus, nor any other author mentioning the withdrawal uses these words, it is clear that they had never intended to speak of the whole Roman populace North of the Danube, but rather, only a fraction of it, of an indefinite quantity.

• The logistical requirements of a complete withdrawal from Dacia, that is to say, a complete evacuation. In order for the Romans to have evacuated all of the colonists from Dacia (which would have been massive given the extensive colonization due to critical resources found in Dacia), a track of every city, village, cottage, and citizen must have been kept, and their evacuation carefully recorded. However, no single logistical document referring to this withdrawal has ever been found. No census of how many colonists were withdrawn. There are no catalogues of who was moved and when. It is also important to note that such a massive migration of a sedentary population has never been recorded in World History. There is no historical precedent for such a logistical operation.

• Ernst Gamillschag has attested that the Romanians have preserved the Thracian word for the Danube, “Donaris/Donare” which means “The big river” even though the Albanians and Aromanians use the Turkish word “Duna.” He writes “The old name for the river would have disappeared from the Daco-Roman vocabulary had they only returned to their old homeland centuries after they left. The name “Donaris” was borrowed by the Romans who mixed with the Dacians, and this word has been well preserved.”

• Romanization could not have been possible South of the Jirecek Line, which runs through Bulgaria, Serbia, and the upper part of Albania, as that region was historically Hellenized, whereas only regions to the North of this line were Romanized (this due to the strong standing of Hellenic culture South of this line). The formation of the Romanian people South of this line (in modern Albania) is nigh impossible. .
• An early 13th century biography of St. Olaf of Norway, now preserved in the 14th century manuscript Flatejarbok, mentions Vlachs (Blokumenn) as being Sviatopolk’s allies (in the early XIth century).

• The survival of the Romanians North of the Danube is not surprising especially when we consider another example of such survival, in Wales. When the Romans left Britain, a certain portion of the Roman population was resettled at Brittany in France, but some remained. These people became known as the Welsh, which is a Germanic word for Latin-speakers, and is also the root-word for the term “Vlach”. When we consider the current geographical region of Wales, we find them behind the only mountains in Roman-occupied Britain, where Roman culture was still preserved (though with extremely strong Celtic influences). These mountains acted as an effective shield against the Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Picts, Angles, and other barbarians which ravaged the country. When we consider the topographical realities of Transylvania, it is impossible to assume that no trace of Roman civilization could have survived there while it did in Britain. The Carpathians at Transylvania dwarf the Welsh mountains, and Transylvania also has the advantage of having dense forests, and a very hilly topography. Some historians (both in antiquity and modern times) have described it as looking like a natural fortress. Nomadic barbarians preferred to move through flat plains, where they could benefit from the agility of their horses, which is proven in the way that the Huns, Avars, and Gepids, all choosing to go around the Carpathians into the Pannonian plain through Slovakia, where the mountains are lower, and then possibly swinging around into Transylvania (though their penetration in this region can not be attested as significant).

• The notion that “Vlachs” were colonized in Transylvania in the 13th century by Ladislaus IV the Cuman, king of Hungary loses its credibility when we look at the documentation for this “colonization.” Of the 217 documents pertaining to Transylvania during the reign of Ladislaus IV, none of them mention this colonization. Comparatively, we have 19 documents referring to the 25 year long colonization in Transylvania of the Teutonic Knights, an event which happened 50 years before the “Vlach colonization.”

• inherited Albanian words (Ex: Alb. motër 'sister' < Late IE ma:ter 'mother') shows the transformation Late IE /a:/ > Alb /o/, but all the Latin loans in Albanian having an /a:/ shows Latin a: > Alb a. This indicates that the transformation PAlb /a:/ > PAlb /o/ happened and ended before the Roman arrival in the Balkans.

Archaeological Evidence

• Archaeological digs throughout Transylvania and Romania have discovered many clay pots dating from the IV, V, VI, and VII centuries. What makes these pots particularly interesting is that they were made using the potter's wheel, an invention which no migratory people had when the came through Romania. The only population which could have produced these pots is one which had sufficient contact with the Roman and Hellenic world to adopt this style of making pots. We know the Slavs did not adopt this style until much later because pots made without the use of the potter's wheel are also found throughout Romania during this time.

• The thousands of old Roman coins dating from the IV, V and VI centuries found on Romania are peculiar because they are a) made of bronze and b) show the portrait of contemporary emperors on them. The first part affirms that these coins were not valuable, meaning that they were common currency. There is no way such coins could have found their way into Romania through tribute or trade between the Romans and barbarians because the Goths, Avars, Huns, and others would only accept gold coins and items as tribute, as bronze coins had little value or use to them. The material indicates that these coins were used as a common bartering currency for low-value items (like food or iron) by a poor populace. Their number, and the diverse locations that they've been found in, indicates that this populace was large, and spread all over the country. The second aspect reflects the historical fact that there was significant communication between this proto-Romanian populace and the Roman Empire, enough to allow for the accurate re-minting of coins. Even if the coins were imported by the proto-Romanians from the Romans, it still is evidence of significant contact between the Romans and the Romanians North of the Danube.

• Vasile Parvan discovered two documents in Transylvania dating from the IV century which mentions a Goth "king" who referred to himself as "jude" over his populace, an administrative title preserved also by the Romanian principalities in the Middle Ages. This king chose the title because it must have had some significance to the people he presided over, otherwise there would have been no point in using it as opposed to some proto-Germanic word like "Herzog." Since this title was only relevant to Romanians, it is clear that this king must have presided over the proto-Romanians.

• Latin documents, although rare, are still present after the withdrawal of the Roman administration. Their presence affirms the existence of a populace that could understand Latin, while the rarity reflects the trend of ruralization of the proto-Romanians, caused by the frequent Barbarian raids on the cities in the former colony of Dacia.

• At the supposed site of relocation of these colonists, that being Moesia, of which only a small upper part was renamed as Dacia. In this region, there is no recording of any drastic increase of population, something which would definitely have resulted from such an influx of refugees. When the Goths sought refuge in the Eastern Roman Empire to escape the Huns, their presence is clearly attestable in cesspits, cemeteries, and archaeological relics. The relocated Dacian colonists however, did not leave any impression at all. There is no sudden growth in cemeteries, nor in cremation urns discovered. There is no expansion of cities and towns in the 3rd century, and no new towns are created. This leads to one of two conclusions: Either the newly relocated colonists made sure to only cremate themselves and simply throw away their ashes into the wind, consume as little as possible, smash every pot they had, and be homeless for the rest of their existence; or, such a massive relocation never happened.

• A Daco-Roman necropolis was discovered in Sibiu belonging to the local population, which had, among the objects buried with the deceased, ceramic objects of Roman cultural origin, coins from the time of Antonius Pius (138-161) and Septimius Sever (193-211) and vases made in the Dacian style.

18th Century-Modern Foreign Authors

• Emperor Joseph the Second of Austria (1765-1790) tells us about the Romanians:

“incontestably, the oldest and most numerous denizens of Transylvania.”

• Count Teleki, President of the Transylvanian Chancellery informs us in a document from 1791: “the Vlachs are the oldest inhabitants of Transylvania.”

• Hungarian historian Andras Huszti affirms, in his posthumous work, also dated 1791: “No other nation has a language as similar to Latin as the Vlachs. This is a sure sign which cannot deceive us that they are the followers of the old Roman colonies in Transylvania.”

• German academic Fr. Altheim affirmed: “Dacia, although home to a populace similar to Thracians, had chosen Romanization as opposed to Hellenization after the Roman Empire annexed the province. In Dacia, there seemed to have been a consistent choice made by its inhabitants to become Romans, something attested by consistent historical facts.”
• Cserei Mihaly writes in the 17th century: “From Transylvania, people flee en masse to Moldova. I’ve tried everything to stop them, but nothing has worked.”
• Benko Jozsef writes in 1777: “What remains of the Roman colonists who mixed with others are the Romanians.”
• About the region of Fagaras, Antonio Possevino writes “There are over 70 towns here, almost all of them completely populated by Romanians.”
• Kovary Laszlo writes that before the 1848 revolution there were over a million Romanians in Transylvania and only 213,000 Hungarians, affirming that “you can travel for days and not hear a single person speaking Hungarian.”

• From Huszti Andras: "The offspring of the Dacians still live even today and live where their forefathers lived, and speak in a language similar to their forefathers."
• Losontzy Istvan writes: “Transylvania, to the East of Hungary, was beforehand called Dacia… the Hungarian kings only ruled this land through Transylvanian voievods.”
  • Szilagyi Sandor writes: “Transylvania and Hungary were never together, and were always two different countries… as Transylvania always looked to the Orient, due to the fact that the majority of the population was Orthodox Christian, while Hungary always looked Westward.”
• Gaspar Bojtinus, historian of Gabriel Bethlen, wrote of the union of Transylvania with the Romanian principalities in 1600 as “inevitabilis fatorum lex”, implying that they have always been the same soil with the same people.
• Iosif Banki (1764) writes: “so great is the number of Romanians that they easily outnumber all the other nations of Transylvania combined.”
• Maria Tereza writes in 1748 of Transylvania as “Our Romanian principality.”

• French academic V. Duruy considers the colonization of Dacia: “By far the largest colonial effort in ancient history!”
• The English historian Gibbon writes in “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” in 1777 that after the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Dacia, done by Aurelian, a significant part of the province’s population stayed behind, being more afraid of moving than of Gothic rule. Later, he adds “These people became a great nation” and then writes “The Vlachs preserve many elements from Latin, and they are proud of their Roman heritage. Even surrounded, they did not mix with the barbarians.”
• The German historian Johann Thunmann writes “The Vlahs North of the Danube are brothers of those in Macedonia, descended from Thracians, which, under the name of Getai or Dacians played a crucial role in history. Under Roman rule they received the language and culture of the Romans and under Roman Emperor Caracalla, the right to citizenship, and called themselves Romans. We cannot confirm that Emperor Aurelian moved the whole population south of the Danube, especially considering so many of them have remained in a nation so big and mountainous… When the Hungarians arrived in 896, they found them in Transylvania and Pannonia, as affirmed by Annonymous, the notary of King Bela IV. The Vlahs have lived since antiquity in Wallachia and Moldova.
  • Paul Joseph Schafarik sustains that the Romanians could not have come from South of the Danube from the simple reason that they existed on both sides of the river continuously, “Both Vlach nations, on both sides of the Danube, had the same origins, from the mixture of Thracians and Getic tribes with the Romans.”
• German historian Scholtzer affirms that the Volochs in the chronicles of Nestor are Vlachs “These volochi are the offsprings of the ancient Thracians, Dacians, and Getai”
• Hungarian Fabian Gabor writes in the ethnography of Arad in 1835: “The Romanians are the oldest people here, and if it is true that they are the colonists of Dacia after Trajan’s conquest, then they can be considered as the aboriginals of this comitat”
  • Hungarian historian Theodor Lehoczky writes in 1890: “The regions from Northeastern Salaj were, without a doubt, inhabited by Romanians before the Magyar elements managed to penetrate into this region.”
• In the great memoirs presented by Hungary at the peace conference in 1920, the texts clearly attest: “The history of Transylvania from the death of Saint Stephen until the reign of Saint Ladislaus is shrowded in darkness.”
• The historian Horvath Mihaly writes “Transylvania was populated by Romanians when the Hungarians first arrived in Pannonia. In Bihor was the dukedom of Menumorut, who had as his subjects Vlachs and Khazars, and in Banat Voievod Glad had an army composed entirely of Romanians. Erdely is led by Gelu at this time as well.”
• Hungarian historian G. Petrovay in 1911 writes “The Hungarian historical hypothesis in which the Romanians arrived in Transylvania in the 13th century does not logically patch there realities of Bereg and Maramures, because these regions had privileges which a people of pastoralists who immigrated slowly, as strangers and enemies, and were captured in battle; to send a captured enemy to guard your borders and land is complete nonsense.” ( in " Szazadok , XLV -1911 , p. 607 -626 )
• German historian Leopold von Ranke: “Dacia was organized into a Roman province. The indigenous Romanians give the name, even today, of “The path of Trajan” to the road which leads into Transylvania, and call Turnu Rosu “The Roman gate”. They are what remains of Trajan’s colonists brought into Dacia.”
• Hungarian F. Eckhart writes in Magyaroszag toertenete, Budapest, 1933, pg 21 “We cannot believe that the Hungrians populated the entire Hungarian kingdom. Their numbers… were too small for something like that. The territories which Hungarians occupied matched the territory of Hungary after Trianon”
• Pope Innocent III (in a letter dated 1203): “Therefore we, who have been appointed by the will of God and Father, unworthy as we are, as vicars and successors of the Apostolic Sea, to prove by the force of facts our fatherly love for the Church of the Bulgarians and Romanians(Vlachs), who are said to be the descendents of the ROMANS, by their flesh and blood”
• Pope Innocent III (In a letter addressed to Ionita, lord of the Bulgarians and Romanians, dated 1203)

' Thus, taking this into account, we have decided since long, through our envoy or our letters, that we should pay a visit to your lordship, so that, realizing your faith to the Roman Church, your Mother, we might then send you, who say that you are a descendent of the Noble kin of the Romans…, As he (God the Father) will help you to be a Roman in this worldly life and for your Eternal Salvation by your own striving, the same as you are by your descent; and he shall help the people of your country which say that they are the Romans, blood and flesh'.

Ancient and medieval sources

• The Byzantine Emperor Constantine the 7th Porphyrogenetes (912 - 959) writes at the middle of 10th century "De cerimoniis", "De thematibus" and "De administrando imperio". Dealing briefly with the settlement of the Slavs in Balkans and with the events triggered by this, Constantine the 7th speaks in his last work about the Romanian population, calling them Romans (!): "They are called Romans and they have preserved this name to the present times";

• A papal census in 1332 found that of 3000 towns in Transylvania, only 900 had Catholic parishes. In Banat, around 95% of the population followed the Eastern Orthodox rite, and in Maramures, Orthodox Christians made up 90% of the population until Ruthenian refugees were settled in the region, dropping the percentage to 80%.

• A biographer of the Roman Emperor Aurelian, in reference to the withdrawal from Dacia, writes: “The whole population which lived near military camps, the families of military men, veterans who had retired in the region, and merchants followed the army to the right side of the Danube. However, a large number of settlers who had lived there for a long time and maintained good relations with the Goths did not have a single reason to evacuate the province. In this sense, a complete withdrawal of Dacia could not be possible without a new war, as the Goths would not have allowed these settlers to leave.”
• The Byzantine writer Kendros writes of Vlachs near the river Richios and Slavs attacking Salonika in 667.
• Byzantine writer Kinnamos writes of the Vlachs North of the Danube in 1167, saying “They arrived long ago as colonists from Italy.”
• Persian Gardizi (end of 11th century) speaks about a Christian Latinate people situated between Russians, Bulgarians and Hungarians: "They are all Christians… they are more numerous than the Hungarians".
• The Armenian cartographer Chorenatsi writes in the 9th century of a "the country which is called Balak” (in reference to Blachs/Vlachs) North of the Danube.
• According to Kekaumenos' Strategicon (1066), the Vlachs of Epirus and Thessalia came from north of the Danube and from along the Sava.
• Chronicon Pictum Vindobonensementions says “This Gyula was a strong and great prince, who, while hunting in Transylvania, found a great city built by the Romans long ago.” Chronicon Posoniense then mentions the name of the town as “„ …civitas Alba in Erdeuel”.
• Nestor's Chronicle, (1097-1110), relating events from 862 to 1110, mentions Wallachians attacking and subduing the Slavs north of Danube and settling among them.

• A runestone from the Njoshem cemetery in Gotland dating from the 11th century commemorates a merchant Rodfos who was traveling to Constantinople through “The land of the Vlachs” where he was killed. The geographic region in question is clearly North of the Danube.

• Kekaumenos writes in 1078 that the Vlachs were the instigators of a 1066-1067 rebelliong against the Byzantine Empire. He mentions that these Vlachs, anticipating military turbulence, sent their wives and children “to the mountains of Bulgaria”, suggesting the existence of permanent settlements in that region and transhumant pastoralism, contradicting the Hungarian point of view that the Vlachs were nomadic.

• Nicetas Choniates tells us that as Andronic Comnenos was heading towards the Cneazate of Hailici in 1164, but was captured by Vlachs along the way. It’s important to note that at the time the Byzantine Empire controlled all the territory up to the Danube Delta (as the Empire of Vlachs and Bulgars was only founded in 1185), including Dobruja, and the state of Hailici controlled most of the Medieval state of Moldova. This leaves only Southern Moldova and Eastern Wallachia as the location of this kidnapping.

• The Byzantine historian I. Kynnamos writes that Leon Vatatzes, in preparing for an attack on the Magyars, mobilized many Romanians from the coastline of the Pontus Euxinus. He then also writes of Romanians from the north of Danube taking part, alongside the Imperial commander Leon Vatatzes, in the campaign, in the year of 1167, adding his remark about the Vlachs (Romanians): "it is said they are colonists arrived a long time ago from Italy."
• The Polish Chronicler Dlugosz writes in his Historia Polonica that in a battle in 1070 between the cneaz of Polotsk and Kiev, the cneaz of Polotsk had in his army “Russians, Pecennegs, and Vlahs.”
• Antonius Bonfinius wrote: “Because the Romanians are descendants of the Romans, a fact that even today is attested by their language, a language that, even though they are surrounded by diverse barbarian peoples, could not be destroyed.... even if all kinds of barbarian attacks flooded over the province of Dacia and the Roman people, we can see that the Roman colonies and legions that had been established there could not be annihilated”
• Francesco della Valle wrote in 1534: "the emperor Trajan, after conquering this country, divided it among his soldiers and made it into a Roman colony, so that these Romanians are descendants, as it is said, of these ancient colonists, and they preserve the name of the Romans"
• Despot Voda wrote in 1561: "we are a brave people of a warrior race, descendants of the illustrious Romans, who made the world tremor. And in this way we will make it known to the whole world that we are true Romans and their descendants, and our name will never die and we will make proud the memories of our parents"
• In the mid 16th century Anton Verancsics wrote: “Transylvania is inhabited by three nations, the Szecklers, the Saxons, and the Hungarians; I would, nevertheless, add the Romanians, who, although they easily equal the number of all the others, do not have any liberties or a nobility, nor any rights of their own…”

• “Gesta Henrici”, written by the cleric Godefirdus von Viterbium, who lived in the year 1120 A.D. In this section of the song, he mentions countries conquered by Rome, which includes “Blachina” (Blach, being a synonym to Vlach, meant Romanian)

• In 1374 Pope Grigore IX wrote of Transylvania: "Multitudo quorundam popolorum qui Valachones vocantur"

• “Das Nibelungenlied”, composed in the year 1140. In Chapter XXII, we see a passage mentioning Vlachs and their leader, Ramunc. The context of the whole song was the marriage of Attila, and many cultures, each speaking a different language. From these, we find the duke Ramunc, who, together with seven hundred of his best fighters, scare away the horses of the Huns.
• Thomas Tuscus wrote, on the expedition of the emperor Conrad III against the Turks, in a Crusade during 1140 AD: “The troops from Provence, from France, Lotaringia and Germany went towards Constantinople through Hungary, Valahia and Pannonia” implying the existence of an organized Vlah state during the 12th century.

With the beginning of the 11th century, several contemporary sources mention the presence of Vlachs in Transylvania and the surrounding area, while a few other sources — though rather blunt in their nature — mention the Vlach presence in Transylvania as early as 8th century. These sources also mention the Vlach presence in Pannonia at the arrival of the Hungarians (Magyars), and Avars and they indicate that some of those Vlachs were pushed from Pannonia by the invading Hungarians and settled in Transylvania.

The Byzantine chronicler Priscus of Panium mentions in the year 448, the presence of a Latin-speaking populace North of the Danube. The populace was called by him "Ausoni"(It should be noted that this was at a time before Slavic migration, so the exonym “Vlach” was not applied to these populace). In 545, Procopius of Caesarea mentions "the trick played by an Ant (a Slav or Alan from present-day Moldavia) who is supposed to have passed himself off as a Byzantine General by speaking a form of Latin which he had learned in these regions." An ancient letter from one Emmerich of Elwangen to Grimaldus, abbot of St. Gall, written about 860 mention Vlachs, under the name of Dacians, living north of Danube together with Germans, Sarmatians, and Alans; and "the World Chronicle of 1277, referring to the ninth century," possibly mistakens these Dacians for Wallachians. The World Chronicle of Jansen Enikel, written in Vienna in 1277, mentions Charlemagne going on a campaign in the east (around 8th century) and met with Wallachians. At the time of Charlemagne, the Hungarians of Arpad have yet not arrived in Pannonia, and the chronicle, when mentioning the Hungarians, refers to the people inhabiting the future Hungary.

Nestor's Chronicle, (Kiev, 1097-1110), relating events from 862 to 1110, mentions Wallachians attacking and subduing the Slavs north of Danube and settling among them. In the chronicle of Simon of Keza (1282 to 1290), the Vlachs of Pannonia are mentioned as a settled population after the collapse of the Hunnish Empire. The Anonymous Notary of King Béla II (1131-1141) or Béla III (1172-1196) also mention the presence of Vlachs in Pannonia and them mixing with Slavs, but retaining their language and culture. The Descriptio Europæ Orientalis, which was written by a French monk in 1308, discovered in the Paris Library in 1913, mention ten Vlach kings that were defeated by the Hungarians of Arpad. The Chronicon Pictum of Vienna, 1358, also mentions the Vlachs remaining in Pannonia after the invasion of Atilla's Huns and both Chronicon Pictum of Vienna and Simon of Kéza note that "three thousand men of the Hunnish people remained in Pannonia ('in campun Csigla'), calling themselves Siculi (Zakuli), who upon the arrival of the Hungarians moved eastwards "cum Vlachis in montibus". In 1236, the monk Ricardus mention seven Hungarian chiefs that while being in Pannonia, met a Vlach population while Thomas of Spalato mentioned the same thing. The poem of the Nibelungs, written between 1140 and 1160, mentions the wedding of Attila and the presence at it of Vlachs. and Weltchronik (World Chronicle) by Rudolph von Ems, written around 1250, mentions Vlachs living in Pannonia. The Armenian cartographer Chorenatsi writes in the 9th century of a "the country which is called Balak” (in reference to Blachs/Vlachs) North of the Danube. Persian Gardizi (end of 11th century) speaks about a Christian Latinate people situated between Russians, Bulgarians and Hungarians: "they are more numerous than the Hungarians". Byzantine writer Kinnamos writes of the Vlachs North of the Danube in 1167, saying “They arrived long ago as colonists from Italy.” “Gesta Henrici”, written by the cleric Godefirdus von Viterbium, who lived in the year 1120 A.D. In this section of the song, he mentions countries conquered by Rome, which includes “Blachina” (Blach, being a synonym to Vlach, meant Romanian). A runestone from the Njoshem cemetery in Gotland dating from the 11th century commemorates a merchant Rodfos who was traveling to Constantinople through “The land of the Vlachs” where he was killed. The geographic region in question is clearly North of the Danube. An early 13th century biography of St. Olaf of Norway, now preserved in the 14th century manuscript Flatejarbok, mentions Vlachs (Blokumenn) as being Sviatopolk’s allies (in the early 11th century).

• Among the many Islamic documents about the oriental and south-eastern Europe there is this Persian geographer Gardizi's treatise entitled "The Jewel of Histories", written during 1049-1053 (according to A. Decei) or in 1094 (according to V. Minorsky). Gardizi, describing the ethnical and political reality of Eastern Europe, mentions "a nation from the Roman Empire (az Rum); and they are all Christians (...) and they are more in number than the Magyars..." (see V. Minorsky, "Hudud al Alam", London, 1938, Gibb Memorial Series).
• One century after Kekaumenos, another chronicler, Kynnamos, depicts Romanians from the north of Danube taking part, alongside the Imperial commander Leon Vatatzes, in a campaign against the Magyars, in the year of 1167, adding his remark about the Vlachs (Romanians): "it is said they are colonists arrived a long time ago from Italy" (in original: "qui Italorum coloni quondam fuisse perhibentur"). See also Ioannes Cinnamus, "Epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Alexio Comnenis gestarum", VI, ed. Bonn, p. 260.
• In 1186 Romanians and Bulgarians founded the second Romanian-Bulgarian Empire, marked by the rule of Ionita-the-Handsome, or Kaloiannis (1196-1207). The pope Innocentius the 3rd contacts Ionita to bring him closer, both religiously and politically, on the side of Rome, and says in one of his letters: "Nos autem audito, quod de nobili Urbis Romae prosapia progenitores tui originem traxerint , et tu ab eis et sanguinis generositatem contraxeris...". Ionita replies: "Unde multas egimus gratias omnipotenti Deo, qui visitavit nos...et reduxit nos ad memoriam sanguinis et patriae nostrae a qua descendimus". This reply has the date of 27th November 1202. In 1203 the Pope resumes the correspondence with Basil, the metropolitan bishop of Tarnovo: "...Bulgarorum et Blachorum ecclesiam, quae a Romanis etiam secundum carnem et sanguinem descendisse dicitur...ut qui a Romanis traxerunt originem, ecclesiae Romanae instituta sequantur" (see "Acta Innocentii PP III (1198-1216)", E. Registris Vaticanis alliisque eruit, introductione auxit, notisque illustravit P. Teodosius Haluscynskj, Rome, 1944, p. 207 - "Pontificia Commissio ad redigendum codicem iuris canonici orientalis, Fontes", series III, vol. II).
• Pietro Ransano, altul care scrie despre originea valaha a lui Iancu. Legat de Iancu face cercetari despre noi. El vine cu teoria ca valahii sunt italieni care vorbesc o italieneasca stricata. In evul mediu noi eram numiti la egalitate valahi sau italieni de catre straini.

Pietro Ransano, a biographer of Iancu de Hunedoara, came to the conclusion that the vlachs are Italians who speak a „broken Italian” 108.

Pomponio Leto in the 15th century wrote „Dacia is a province which extendes in both directions over the Danube, which today is called Volochia and is ihabited by Volohs. It is an Italian land, ever since the Dacians speak Italian.”

• • Filippo Buonaccorsi Callimaco (1438-1496) scrie biografia episcopului de Cracovia Zbigniew Olenicki si mentioneaza ca polonezii considera romanii fiind italieni si de aceea ii numeste cu acelasi nume (Italiae indigenas).

Filippo Buonaccorsi Callimaco writes in the 15th century that Poles considered the Romanians as Italians, which is also why they give them the name Wlochy.

• Laonikos Chalkokondyles, a Byzantine writer, came to the conclusion in the 15th century came to the conclusion, after interacting with Vlachs from the Pindus mountains, that the Dacians spoke „a broken Italian.” This is of course the wrong conclusion, but it shows educated men generally regarded the Vlachs as Romanized Dacians.
• Dacia had a huge military presence. Two whole legions, Legio XIII Gemina and Legio V Macedonica, were stationed in Dacia. The province was home to, in addition to these, 49 cohorts, 15 ales, and 19 numeris. This total military presence is staggerring, easily surpassing 40000 men.

• • Pope Clement VI (1342 - 1352)

Olachi Romani, commorantes in partibus Ungarie, Transilvanis, Ultralpines et Sirmus

• • Pope Pius II (1458-1464) Commentarium rerum memorabilium

Valachi lingua utuntur Italica, verum imperfecta, et admodum corrupta; sunt qui legions Romanas

• • Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1501)

Transilvania..., it is inhabited by three peoples: the Saxons, the Szecklers and the Romanians. The Saxons had come from Saxony, and are strong men, used to the struggle…, the Szecklers are considered the most ancient Hungarians…, The Romanians are of Italian stock…'

Arguments against

The circumstances of the Roman conquest. The native population of Dacia suffered considerable losses during the course of the long wars; in essence, Trajan had to repopulate the territory, because the area had become depopulated owing to the heavy losses suffered by the native population. Eutropius mentions thatTemplate:Quote

• The fate of the native population of any newly conquered territory depended largely on how and after what preliminaries it came into the hands of Rome: Trajan annexed Dacia after two bitter and protracted wars; these struggles and the occasional Roman defeats made the Dacians a hated and much-despised enemy. Cassius Dio relates that when Trajan returned to Rome he gave spectacles in the course of which 10,000 gladiators fought; according to Criton, the number of prisoners from the Dacian wars was extremely high, Trajan, however, spared the lives of only some 40 men after his victory.
• The wars brought considerable losses to the Dacian men; part of the local population was deported or fled. The surviving Dacian men were drafted as auxiliary troops and were sent to Britannia and the east; their later fate is not known. Expressly Dacian names occur not in Dacia, but in other parts of the Roman Empire where Dacians were taken as slaves.
• The proper names which can be evaluated from the province total about 3,000 and the Thracian-Dacian names number about 60 (about 2%); thus, the share of Thracian or Dacian personal names is insignificant (e.g., names from the native population comprise about 24% of the total in Noricum), and some of them may even have belonged to colonists form the Balkans. This suggest that Dacian participation in the Romanization of Dacia was minimal.
• The incorporation of the native population into an administrative and territorial organization (civitas peregrine) convenient to Rome was an essential point in the establishing of any new province and the civitas system in part provided the institutional framework for Romanization. In contrast with other provinces, no traces of this system can be detected in Dacia.
• It was in the towns where Romanization first began, when the leaders of the conquered populations in Gallia, Hispania, and elsewhere adopted the Roman culture and the Latin language. Of all the provinces of the Roman Empire, Dacia Traiana had the lowest number of cities (11 or 12 towns are known to have existed). The new settlements in which the existence of Dacians is assumed were situated in rural areas far from the towns.
• Romans conquered less than 50% of the territories inhabited by Romanians; besides, many Dacians lived in remote mountainous areas, with little contact with the main Roman colonies.

Archaeological evidence following the Roman conquest. The archaeological record definitely suggests that a few Dacian groups stayed behind in the province after the Roman conquest. However, after the conquest, the few Dacian groups were transferred from their villages to other territories within the province - only a few settlements (and no cemeteries) continued to exist after the conquest.

• The material culture of the surviving Dacian population is rather undifferentiated: aside from the burial finds, only the pottery vessels can be studied in this respect. Only a few vessel types continued to be manufactured in the provincial period from the diverse pottery industry of the former pre-conquest period. This type of earthenware is practically the only material attributed to Dacians living at these sites.
• In Dacia, hardly any interaction or exchange of ideas can be noted between the pottery of the native population and the pottery wares used by the new settlers.

The short period of the Roman conquest. The province existed for a mere 165 years; assimilation and a complete change of language would have been impossible in such a short time. Moreover, as Eutropius recounts Template:Quote

• The surrender and the evacuation of Dacia is described rather uniformly in the sources. The evacuation of Dacia was an emergency measure, but it was an well organized action: the remaining garrison troops were withdrawn and the surviving population was resettled in Moesia where a new province called Dacia (later Dacia Ripensis and Dacia Mediterranea) was created.
• After the disintegration of the Roman administration and provincial organization and the collapse of military defense in the Middle Danubian provinces, Roman civilization in the region was sooner (e.g., in northeastern Pannonia) or later (e.g., in western and southern Pannonia, Raetia and certain parts of Noricum) swept away by the successive invading waves of the Migration period some 130-150 years later. Surviving population groups (who stayed behind the provinces) were either assimilated by the continuously changing newcomers or perished - they were not to become the ancestors of a population speaking a Romance language in spite of the fact that the situation and circumstances (a uniform population that had evolved over the course of 400 years of Romanization) were infinitely more favorable there than in Dacia.
• After the withdrawal of the Romans from Dacia Traiana, the historical and ethnic picture of the former Roman province was radically changed. These changes were caused primarily by invasions of the Huns that scattered the East Germanic tribes (the Goths and the Gepids) in Eastern Europe and destroyed all vestiges of Roman urban life north of the Danube. There are numerous written accounts about the history of Germanic tribes in the Migration period.

Archaeological evidence following the Roman withdrawal. Archaeological evidence demonstrate that the Roman army, the soldiers’ families and all other civilians whose livelihood was strongly linked to the military were evacuated from the province.

• Life came to an abrupt end in the 48 Roman castella and the settlements that depended on and lived off these forts (the so-called vici auxiliary): those which were not resettled and built in during the Middle Ages to this day offer the same desolate spectacle with their earthen ramparts and deep ditches as the agri decimates of Baden-Württemberg (abandoned at roughly the same time), or the border forts of the Antonine Wall in Scotland.
• It is probable in the case of the four municipia that held out the longest, i.e., in Napoca, Potaissa, Apulum, and Ulpia Traiana, that the small and wretched population groups within or around their walls at first accepted Gothic overlordship, however the traces of these groups in the archaeological records (a few burials) do not extend beyond the close of the 3rd century. At the same time, the buildings within the stone walls decayed rapidly, and by the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries the military headquarters in Potaissa was being used as a burial ground by groups of eastern barbarians.
• The rural homes (villae) and the farmsteads of the advocates of Romanization had perished to such an extent that in the 4th century the Goths had already opened cemeteries on their sites (e.g., in Pălatca). Of the 58 rural settlements in which a Roman-Dacian symbiosis was assumed, only 4 (7%) continued to be inhabited after the Roman withdrawal (i.e., Archiud, Mugeni, Åžura Mică and Obreja).
• There is only one way a “Romanized” population could possibly have survived: if they had resorted to active defense and had withdrawn into hastily erected hilltop forts and fortified sites (as indeed had the provincial population of the Balkans and of southwest Pannonia, the population of the Ardennes) – however, there are no traces of late Roman refugia or fortified places in Transylvania. In Sarmizegetusa, the amphitheater was blocked by gravel which is thought to indicate that it had been used for defense - but after the 4th century no archaeological findings are ascertainable for the two following centuries.
• Objects excavated in Soporu de Cîmpie do not exclude nor do they prove a continued use of its cemetery following the Roman withdrawal, because they were used from the 2nd to the 5th century in a vast territory of the Roman Empire as well as in the Barbaricum (territories outside the empire).
• The cemetery of Bratei reveals elements of the Migration Period and is an example of a continuity of settlement and is, at the same time, illustrative of ethnic discontinuity, since the excavations reveal elements characteristic of different peoples (Romans, Germanic tribes, Slavs, and Avars).
• Relics of the late Roman rites and costumes characteristic of the Tetrarchy (293-313 AD) and later do not occur on the left bank of the Danube. The so-called cruciform brooches may have reached the Barbaricum as booty (with sporadic finds of such fibulæ among the Germanic Quadi, the Sarmatians of the Great Hungarian Plain); therefore these “crossbow” brooches do not confirm the presence of a Roman population. The presence of Roman coins neither is evidence for the presence of Romanized persons - in fact, the Roman coin circulation of other regions of the Barbaricum shows little, if any, divergence from the circulation of post-271 Roman coins in Transylvania.
• The Visigothic wares reflect the cultural impact of the Roman provinces lying beyond the Lower Danube (especially of the handicrafts of the border towns); these influences and Roman imports (glass, amphorae and flagons) are more frequently documented in the lowland along the northern side of the Lower Danube than in the inland regions to the north. There is even less evidence of late impacts of the former Roman provincial handicrafts; moreover, the technological know-how of firing vessels to a bright red or yellow color disappeared entirely.
• The number of Christians among the Goths appears to have been considerable already around 347, therefore the few 4th to 6th century Christian oil lamps and the votive tablet (donarium) with the inscription ZENOVIUS and a pendant bearing the monogram of Christ cannot be cited as proof for some sort of “Roman” presence. The 4th century donarium from Biertan had been manufactured somewhere in Illyricum.
• The number of Latin inscriptions from the 4th century increased in Serdica the new capital of Dacia that lay in a Greek-speaking area; this phenomenon can certainly be linked to the Latin-speaking population evacuated from Dacia.

Toponyms. The extensive disappearance of Roman names, much greater by far than in the other European provinces of the empire, also confirms the evacuation and surrender of the province, demonstrating that it does a complete and total change in population.

• Change in place-names and changes of population rarely take place at the same time - local populations rarely disappear without trace. In the parts of the empire where great masses of the Roman population stayed behind (in the later neo-Latin countries) an abundance of Roman toponyms and river names may be found which were affected only by regular patterned linguistic change. In other areas where the provincial population retained only part of their former homeland which was resettled by new peoples, place-names were changed to a certain extend; e.g., in Raetia, Noricum and Pannonia, the Roman population survived into the 5th century and afterwards they disappeared so that only a small percentage of their place-names have come down to us (however, in addition to water names, town names have also survived in these former provinces).
• In Dacia, only the names of a few rivers have been preserved: the SomeÅŸ and the MureÅŸ; however, as only a section of these rivers flowed through Dacia, the survival of their name cannot be entirely attributed to the Dacian population. The survival of the river names of the Olt and Cerna can be ascribed to the Romans and Byzantines who controlled the northern bank of the Danube and the narrow shoreline from counter forts. Moreover, the pre-Latin names of the large rivers were transmitted in Slavic form - the Slavic peoples occupied the Gepid-inhabited parts of Transylvania during the second half of the 5th century and the first wave of the Slavs reached the Danube toward the end of the 5th century.
• In addition to a few controversial water names, not a single place-name has survived in Dacia. The earliest stratum of place-names and river-names in the Transylvanian area of the Carpathian Basin is of Slavic origin. Although some geographical names are assumed to be inherited directly from the Latin, but their identification have been challenged; e.g., there is a proposed etymology of the name of Sîncel (documented as Zonchel for the first time in 1252) from the Latin (sanctus > *santicellus > sînt(u)cel), but the latter qualifies “a far-fetched form”.

Linguistics. The discovery of the ancient characteristics of Romanian and their relationship with several Balkan languages (e.g., the Albanian, Bulgarian, and Greek) challenged the theory of continuity in the former Roman province of Dacia.

• Romanian contains, to the same degree as the other Romance languages, all the characteristics of Late Latin, i.e., the changes that appeared in Latin during the 3rd to 7th centuries; the absence of numerous lexical elements does not have much importance, since every Romance language shows the absence of several words that exist in the other Romance idioms. Dacia Traiana was under Roman rule for a much shorter time (about 165 years) than were the provinces south of the Danube (about 600 years); and during the period of Late Latin the area of Dacia Traiana was divided from the Latin-speaking population in the Roman Empire – this situation would have led to a Romance language substantially different from one that could develop on the Balkans during the period of the Late Latin.
• The first written texts in Northern Romanian shows that the dialect of Romanian spoken in MaramureÅŸ and in adjacent areas of Moldavia (i.e., in territories in which Roman settlements never existed) was much closer to Latin only a few centuries ago than any Romanian dialect today. The most conservative language of the Vlach idioms is Aromanian, which shows many archaic characteristics in all areas of language: phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexical elements.
• There is nothing to support the idea that the Goths living north of the Danube would have had any influence on the speech of the ancestors of the Romanians, although from 271, the area to the north of the Lower Danube became the land of the Goths. The presence of a Germanic population in Transylvania (most probably Ostrogoths), can be attested from the 4th century and written sources of the 5th and 6th centuries refer only to Germanic peoples in that territory. The lexical elements assumed to derive from Gothic are mostly of Slavic origin, and the Romanian grammatical elements believed to be of Gothic origin are also found in Albanian, Bulgarian, and other Balkan languages.

Migration from the south

According to the 19th-century scholar Eduard Robert Rösler, a Romance population came from the south of the Danube in the Middle Ages and settled down in present-day Romania.

Arguments for

Toponyms. Not a single geographical name (place, river, or mountain names) in Romania attests the Roman continuity from the Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. In the transcarpathian territories of Romania, the largest part of the ancient toponymy is of Slavic origin and the sound pattern of these names indicates that the borrowings occurred after the 11th or 12th century. Within the arch of the Carpathian Mountains, the majority of the ancient geographical names are of Hungarian origin with fewer names of Slavic origin. Moreover, a significant difference compared with the transcarpathian territories is that many geographical names of Slavic origin in Transylvania were transferred to Romanian via Hungarian and some even through German.

• Pre-Slavic, presumably also pre-Latin, names of the large rivers, such as MureÅŸ, SomeÅŸ and Olt, were transmitted in Slavic form. If Romanians had adopted and adapted the Roman names (Marissus, Samus and Alutus) then Romanian linguistic rules would have produced *MareÅŸ, *SameÅŸ, and *Alut respectively; therefore they derived from the likely Slavic forms (*MoriÅ¡, *SomuÅ¡, and *Olt). The Romanian Abrud must have been borrowed from the Hungarian. The Romanian variant of the name of the Ampoi River is derived from the German *Ampoj.
• The 153 tributaries of the rivers Ampoi, CriÅŸ, MureÅŸ, Olt, SomeÅŸ and TimiÅŸ, that flow throw at least two or three villages in the Carpathian Basin on the territory of Romania, may be broken down according to the origin of the name, and of these 25,5% are Slavic; 47%, Hungarian; 0,7%, German; 0,7%, Romanian (a name created in a late period); and 26,8%, of unknown origin. Of the 41 (26,8%) river names of unknown origin, there are 9 cases in which the sound pattern of the Hungarian and Romanian names clearly indicate that the Romanian form originates from Hungarian; none of the names shows a sound pattern indicating a Latin or Romanian origin and some of the names may be of Turkic (e.g., Pecheneg) origin.
• The toponym substratum of FăgăraÅŸ county, the first Transylvanian bridgehead of the Romanians is Hungarian; they adopted these names and the formation of their own names appeared only in the second half of the 14th century. There is no original Romanian name giving in the Å¢ara Bârsei prior to 1400 at all: Romanian names were formed from words adopted from German (and Hungarian). The same can be established in relation to the toponyms of the Saxon Seats, although some of its Romanian toponyms came from the Slavs who remained there until the settlement of Romanians. The heritage of independent Romanian name giving in Hunedoara county (the other chief territory of Transylvanian Romanians besides FăgăraÅŸ) also goes back only to the second half of the 14th century.
• In the northern, Romanized areas of the Balkans the Roman names of towns and rivers adopted by the Slavic population imply that at the time of the Slavic invasion only part of the Romanized town-dwelling population had fled to the south, while the rest stayed on and assimilated into the Slavic community only later. According to the evidence of medieval place-names, the inhabitants of the neighboring Romanian villages and pastoral communities maintained their language until their 14th-16th century migration to the north. This is proved by hundreds of Romanian place-names, or by place-names that refer to a Romanian population (e.g., Vlasi) in the enormous area stretching between Sarajevo and Sofia from west to east, and between NiÅ¡ and Skopje form north to south, although the Romanians had left that region by the end of the Middle Ages, or had assimilated into the Serbian and Bulgarian environment.
• Several Romanian place names were preserved in the documents written by Serbian kings between about 1200 and 1450; all these clearly belong to the (Northern) Romanian language, and several of them currently exist, in more or less Slavicized form, in Serbia and Bulgaria.

Written sources. The Romanians were first mentioned in historical records in Moldavia in 1164 and in Transylvania in 1210; moreover, there are data to prove that large numbers of people arrived from outside the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary. Starting from the second part of the 13th century, more and more data indicate the settling of Romanians. The oldest Muntenian chronicle preserved a popular tradition among the Romanians in the 16th century about a migration of their ancestors toward the North:Template:Quote

• Niketas Choniates mentioned the beginning of the 1185 revolt of Vlachs, under the brothers Asen and Peter, against the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos. With Cuman help, the area broke away from Byzantium and the Second Bulgarian Empire (also called the Bulgarian-Vlach Empire) was founded; the Rumanian element ceased to play a role in this empire from the mid-13th century on.
• The Romanians belonged to the Archdiocese of Ohrid, and in the 11th century a separate diocese was established for them in Vranje in the Morava Valley.
• From the end of the 12th century, large Romanian communities had been moving to Serbia, only to disappear from there as well or to become assimilated into the local populations. While references to Romanians in Serbian royal charters became progressively rarer, the number of Romanians in the Kingdom of Hungary grew steadily. By the 15th century, these people, who spoke the (northern) Romanian language, had largely abandoned their Balkan homeland to settle along the Danube's left bank.
• King Ladislaus IV of Hungary (1272-1290), and later other kings, allowed lay and clerical landowners to settle Romanians on their lands. E.g., King Ladislaus IV allowed the chapter of Alba Iulia to settle 60 Romanian households to the edges of its Aiud and FeneÅŸ properties (in Alba County; King Andrew III of Hungary (1290-1301) allowed Alexander de genere Ákos in 1292 to settle Romanians in the lands of Bretea Română, Gurasada and Ilia (in Hunedoara County). In 1293, King Andrew III ruled that Romanians who had been settled without royal permission should be returned, even forcibly, to the royal estate of Scekes. Considering the small territorial extension of Scekes demesne, it is likely that relatively few Romanians lived in Transylvania at this time, or the king took notice of only few of them because of their scattered settlements.
• In 1334, a certain Voivode Bogdan was granted land in TimiÅŸ county (in the Kingdom of Hungary), and he brought so many people with him to his new estates there that the move took nine months to complete. In 1359, six members of another distinguished Romanian family from Wallachia settled in TimiÅŸ county; six years later, they received 5 estates which formed a separate district, and by 1510 the district had 36 villages.

Linguistics. The analysis of the Romanian language shows the close relationship of the Romanian language with several idioms spoken in the central parts of the Balkan Peninsula.

• The substratum of Romanian shows very close connections to present-day Albanian. Romanian-Albanian concordances are found in all areas of language: phonology and syntax, as well as lexicology and phraseology. The pre-Roman linguistic material, existing in all areas of language, is shared to a great extent by Albanian, which suggests that the pre-Roman substratum of Romanian was the language spoken by the ancestors of the Albanians or an idiom very closely related to their idiom.
• All Eastern Romance languages (Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian) contain a group of the same 70-odd words of Slavic origin, of a sound pattern characteristic of Slavic in the period before the 10th century; and changes of meaning also occurred when Slavic words were transferred to the Eastern Romance languages. These loans must originate from a special contact in a certain period and in a specific territory, indicating that the speakers of the languages belonged to a homogenous community of people - it is most unlikely that their territory comprised, in addition to the central parts of the Balkan peninsula, the plains north of the Lower Danube and the territory within and east of the Carpathian Mountains.

Arguments against

The Jireček Line divides the areas of the Balkans which were under Latin and Greek influences

• No historical source whatsoever — not even Hungarian — before the 18th century claimed rights over Transylvania based on its presumed lack of population or even recent migrations which made up the then current population.
• The few Greek loanwords for religious terms in Romanian entered via Vulgar Latin, not directly from Greek (ex: Ro. biserică <Latin *basilica <Greek basilike). Important religious terms in Romanian came directly from Latin, which suggests the Daco-Romanians were converted to Christianity in the Latin language. Later on, during the Middle Ages, Romanians used Old Church Slavonic as their liturgical language, so the Eastern Orthodox church organization was probably brought by Bulgarian Slavs. This seems to imply the presence of a Slavic buffer zone between Greeks and Romanians .
• Dacian toponyms and hydronyms were kept; examples are the names of some rivers (Samus - SomeÅŸ, Marisia - MureÅŸ, Porata - Prut) and the names of some cities (Petrodava - Piatra NeamÅ£, Abruttum - Abrud). It should be noted, however, that the preservation of toponyms only indicates continuous settlement, and not necessarily continuous settlement by the same people. E.g. both Slavic and Hungarian languages kept the Latin name of Danubia (Dunaj and Duna), none of them being of Latin descent. On the other hand, the two waves of settlers need to coexist for a significant amount of time in the same areas for toponyms to survive, which is precisely what's being argued against by this theory.
• Historical accounts such as Byzantine chronicler Kakaumenos, in his Strategion. He mentions the "Dacians and Bessi, who used to live near the Danube and Sava rivers.. in inaccessiblie and inhospitable places". From there they spread to out south to Macedonia, Epirus and Greece, and northwest to Romania.
• A 13th century Hungarian chronicle, Gesta Hungarorum, claims that when the Magyars arrived in Pannonia, the surrounding areas were inhabited by Vlachs (Romanians). The main arguments against their existence is the presence of provably wrong information in some other parts of the Gesta, and the fact that Gesta Hungarorum mentions Cumans among the peoples who lived in Transylvania at that time, whereas the Cumanians actually arrived there 150 years after the Magyars. There is opposing opinion which claims that the author of the Gesta actually confuses Cumans with Pechenegs, who spoke a similar language to that of the Cumans and lived in approximately the same territory.
• A chronicle by Venerable Nestor (1056 - 1136 AD) mentions Walachians (Romanians) fighting against Magyars north of the Danube in 898.
• No medieval chronicle mentions any large-scale migrations of Romanic peoples from the Balkans to Romania; contrary to a south to north movement, a chronicle indicates rather a north to south movement: according to Cecaumenos' Strategicon (1066), the Vlachs of Epirus and Thessalia came from north of the Danube and from along the Sava.
• Regional differences within the Romanian language indicate that in certain Romanian areas which coincide quite exactly with the ancient Roman province of Dacia, the language preserved more Latin substance than in the rest of the country. It would be extremely hard to explain why Romanians supposedly coming from remote territories south of the Danube speak a more Latin Romanian language exactly within the boundaries of what used to be a Roman province 6-7 centuries before their alleged arrival to these areas, while in the Romanian spoken outside the Carpathian Basin those Latin elements were lost or diluted.
• Morpho-syntactical, lexical and phonetical differences between Romanian and Aromanian are considerable, making mutual comprehension almost impossible. It is therefore extremely difficult to explain how two different Romance languages could appear and differentiate at the same time and in the same area, as implied by the immigration theory. It is also extremely difficult to explain, why only one of those two Romance-speaking populations, namely the Romanians, took the initiative of emigrating northwards across the Danube, while the Aromanians remained in their original area.
• If the hypothesis of a single proto-Romanian language is assumed, then the split of the proto-Romanian into Aromanian and Romanian should have taken place some centuries before the 10th century, since linguists agree that the build up process of both Romanian and Aromanian was completed up to the 10th century. Actually, researches have shown that the process of linguistic differentiation between Aromanian and Romanian “took place after the beginning of the Slavic influence and before the Magyar influence (between the 6th and the 9th centuries)”. Since a northwards Vlach migration could have been possible only before the linguistic split between Aromanian and Romanian (otherwise one could find traces of Aromanian on northern Danube, which have never been the case), a northwards Vlach migration could be probably hypothesised not later than the 7-8th century and not, as some immigrationists claim, as early as the 11th century.
• The name of the Danube in Romanian has a form which appears to be original (derived from a reconstructed *donaris) and not borrowed from other languages, which shows that the Romanians always lived somewhere near this river and not far south like some theories suggest.
• The lack of Gothic words in Romanian is not evidence that a Daco-Roman populace never co-inhabited the region with the Goths. Comparatively, literary Italian has no words of Longobard (Lombard - a Germanic tribe that invaded Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire) origin, though the Lombards presided over Italy for centuries. However, the Lombaridan dialect of Italian contains Longobard words. There are also several words in Romanian of Germanic origin (lăutar etc.)

See also

• History of Romania
• Origin of Albanians
• Bulgarians, Bulgars, Bulghars, Onogurs, Bolgars, Old Great Bulgaria
• Hungarians, Magyars, Huns, Avars, Alans
• Germans, Germanic peoples
• Illyrians
• Dacians
• Thracians
• Pannonians
• Sarmatians
• Jireček Line
• Etymology of Romania
• Protochronism
• Paleo-Balkan languages
• Bulgar language
• Bulgarian language
• Pannonian language
• Ethnogenesis

Sources

• Illyés, Elemér: Ethnic Continuity in the Carpatho-Danubian Area; Struktura Press, 1992, Hamilton, ON; ISBN 0-88033-146-1.
• Köpeczi, Béla (General Editor); Barta, Gábor - Bóna, István - Makkai, László - Szász, Zoltán (Editors); Barta, Gábor - Bóna, István - Közpeczi, Béla - Makkai, László - Miskolczy, Ambrus - Mócsy, András - Péter, Katalin - Szász, Zoltán - Tóth, Endre - Trócsányi, Zsolt - R. Várkonyi, Ágnes - Vékony, Gábor (Authors): History of Transylvania; Akadémiai Kiadó, 1994, Budapest; ISBN 963 05 6703 2
• Kristó, Gyula: Early Transylvania (895-1324); Lucidus Kiadó, 2003, Budapest; ISBN 963 9465 12 7

External links

• Friesian.com: The Vlach Connection
• Historical myths in Communist Romania (also part 2)
• A polemical exchange between professors Curta and Vasary touching the problem of the Origin of Romanians
• Michigan State University Libraries - Geography and ethnic geography of the Balkans to 1500
• http://mek.oszk.hu/03400/03407/html/ - On-line English version of the ‘History of Transylvania’ (in three volumes)

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User IP 188.133.25.175 :

"Although in this article the Vlachs are referred as Romanians, many people especially the majority of them living in Greece have an opposite belief. They do not consider themselves Romanian and for this reason they did not send their children to Romanian schools. A historical example is that where Romania sent an embassador in Greece in order to open new schools for Vlachs in the area of Pindos. After some time the embassador wrote a letter asking which was the reason for sending him to a place where noone was interested for the Romanian language. The Vlachs all sent their children to Greek schools, as they considered themselves greeks. Another effort was then made to appeal to the poorer people, by giving them land in Romanian territory. Many of them left Greece since they were having difficulties to survive due to poverty and nowadays still remember their origins in Greece. If these people are asked regarding their ethnic origin they consider themselves romanian, although those people they left behind still consider themselves greeks."

This claim of the Vlachs of Greece is also expressed through their cultural associations, which have published numerous books, unfortunately written only in Greek. Another example which may be found in the records of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the settlement of Vlachs in the area of Almyros in Thessaly during 1878-1900. The ministry was alerted by the settlement of people coming from the area of Northern Epirus (modern southern Albania), so they sent the police to ask them who they are. The people said they were Greeks, Vlachs, visiting other Vlachs who were already staying there. Today, these people have their own cultural association having no relation to Romania or any Romanian cultures.