Quote:</em></strong><hr>Well, but is that a fact? I mean, if the Dacian population was Romanised enough, the Visigoths and Huns may not have had much impact. For both of these tribes, seemingly large, consisted mostly of add-on groups from various ethnic backgrounds, even Romans at times. It is known from Alarics Visigoths that they sometimes numbered tens of thousands after a victory, and sometimes just hundreds after a defeat. The rest had suddenly 'melted away'.<hr><br>
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Well...Transsylvania actually seems to have attracted considerable numbers of newcomers...the mountains provided some protection, while the region's considerable mineral wealth attracted the attention of various overlords. Of course, this was often bad news for the people who were already there...<br>
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However, the arguments against continuity seem to be as follows:<br>
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1) placenames are overwhelmingly "Rumanised" Slavic names, or even Magyar and German ones. Original Latin names (as opposed to recently renamed cities) are nonexistent or rare.<br>
2) Rumanian has a large vocabulary of Slavic origin, but these words seem to indicate Serbian and Bulgarian influences, which suggests a fairly recent origin south of the Danube.<br>
3) The Rumanians are orthodox. If they came from Transsylvania, they would have been Catholic, since the Hungarian kings would have made sure of that. Their orthodoxy suggests an origin AFTER conversion south of the Danube.<br>
4) There are no historical references to Rumanians predating the High Middle Ages. I would have to check, but the first seem to date to the 13th century, if my memory serves me right.<br>
5) There are apparently close linguistic links with the gradually dwindling Romance-speaking groups in the Balkans. That is, among Latin-speakers the Balkan Vlakhs are the closest to the Rumanians.<br>
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On balance, I think it most likely the Romanians have a great deal of "Roman" history behind them - but one originating in the medieval East Roman Empire, not the abandoned province of Dacia. Still, that does not quite exclude the possibility that there were, for quite some time, pockets of "Romans" in Transsylvania. However, I think that successive migrations into the region would have gradually eroded them into nothingness - I think they were probably absorbed by the Slavs (hence the overwhelmingly Slavic placenames), who in turn were later on assimilated by Magyars, Germans and probably the earliest incoming Vlakhs from the south.<br>
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The entire region of the lower Danube and Transsylvania is anyway a strange kind of borderland. Transsylvania is rich in minerals and often acted as a defensive buffer for the medieval kingdom of Hungary-Croatia to the west. Wallachia and Moldavia usually fell under the control of horse nomads from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, something that had been going on since the early Iron Age. People in these regions often seemed to have been forced to leave.<br>
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Anyway, the Hungarian kings, in the Middle Ages, were very anxious to resettle an apparently partly empty Transsylvania (the Hungarian plain itself wasn't exactly densely populated either...), establishing various groups of Germans, Magyars, Cumans, and probably also Vlakhs there. If pagan Cumans (soon to be converted, of course!) were welcome, Christian (even if Orthodox) Vlakhs would have been even more so. The bitterness between Catholics and Orthodox only really developed during the 13th century, so the minor theological difference wouldn't have bothered the Arpad Kings... <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chariovalda>Chariovalda</A> at: 4/7/04 9:49 pm<br></i>
