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As you know very well, the history of your country (and any European country) has been falsified many times, and there are many historians (not that many now) that are "on the take".
But any historian that supports the "germanic race" and all that nowdays is just a revisionist, a.k.a "crackpot". Von Daniken's lookalikes.
I have not heard anyone say "Germanic race" in a long time, which is good. The word race applied to humans always leads to problems...
I do think there were Germanic ethnic groups a long time ago, but I do not agree with you regarding some of the peoples you listed, like the Alans. Maybe you are confusing Indo-European with Germanic
Most people living in Germania in Roman times (we only have references from Roman historians and spies, since Germans had no writing, just "runes") were tagged as either Celtic or Germanic depending on their belicosity. For example, Suevians were tagged as Celts. Such classification was not racial, but cultural (based on language, gods, rites).
Later, such difference became blurred as all people living between the Rhine and the Elbe formed "bunds" of hundred of tribes to cross the Limes, that was the origin of the barbarians that invaded the empire. For example, Franks were not a single tribe, but hundreds, so were Visigoths (that included Sarmatians), Ostrogoths (pre-slavs), Marcomans (Celts), Suevians (Celts), Alans (Iranians), Vandals.
For exasmple, there was a debate among historians about the origin of Herminius or Hermann, the man that defeated Varrus and exterminated three legions during Augustus...his tribe disappeared and became part of a "bund", so nobody knows if he was proto-franc, proto-suavian, etc.
All those people left Germania from the III to the VIth Century, so the people living there now came later and have no relation with historical Germans. Current inhabitants of Germania are pre-slavic and Celtic that lived elsewhere, hidden, in marshy isolated areas, and that were not considered as good warriors to become parts of the federations that invaded the empire. None of them returned to Germania, they remained in the western provinces of the empire, so you have more probabibility of finding a descendant of a historical Germanic basking under a fig tree in Portugal than in Germany.
The impact of the invasions on the ethnic composition of the provinces of the empire was meaningless, Hispania had 10.000.000 inhabitants, Gallia, 15.000..and invaders were as much 500.000 or probably much less.
Later, there was another large "bund" around another "bund" (Franks)..Carolingian Empire (I'm writing from a former region of the empire)...but Caroligian Empire was more Roman Catholic and Feudal than anything else.
I can't confuse INDO-EUROPEAN with Germanic because the Germanic culture (as well as Celtic, Latin and Slavic culture) are INDO-EUROPEAN (formed by R1b invaders that arrived 2500 years ago).
Last edited by Torquemation; 08-31-2012 at 10:51 AM..
Germany is a mess ethnically speaking, but of course there are still lots of Germans today that are Germanic in every sense of the word. It depends on the region you look at. Lower Saxony is much more Germanic than Bavaria.
They are Germanic by diffusion, they are either strange people (Celts and Proto-Slavics) that adopted the culture of those that left or invaders from Jutland and Scandinavia (that had nothing to do with historical Germania). Saxons, for example, left massively for Britannia, you can find them there. Bavarians are Celtics and they were heavely romanized.
That is not the way it works. No people just leaves any region. Some may move on, other stay, mix with new people coming in, etc.
Germans are an amalgam people today, and since that process has been going on for thousands of years, they have kind of become "Germans" without any clear lines as to who is Germanic to what degree. And people are still moving all across Germany today, and mixing and mingling, although for other reasons than in the past.
No....when Germanic tribes moved, they MOVED. They took along grandma, the cat, the parrot, in-laws, kids, whores, brewers, carpenters, they did not leave anybody behind because they knew that it meant a sure death for them. Germanic tribes did not move west because tourism...they were fleeing from the Huns, "Etzel"...
The Huns pushed Slavics, Slavics pushed Germans...the Domino theory. When the Limes (the frontier along the Rhine, a colossal line of fortifications with forts (Monaco, Franco Forte, etc, etc) collapsed...everybody left.
Imagine yourself living in a continuum of forests and marshes with no cities, no "civilizatio" whatsoever, and being offered the opportunity to live in civilized land, where surviving Romans allotted them (at the beginning) gigantic plots of land and riches that they have never seen.
Multiply the contrast of living in a shanty town of Honduras versus living in a middle class house in California by 100.
The Germanic people were not all primitive tribes moving around all the time. That whole idea of the savage Germanic tribes dates back to the Romans, their enemies. We all know what that means in terms of authenticity
There was also some mixing, slavery and what not. Germanic ethnicity is definitely not gone from modern Germany...
Do a gene analysis of what you think are the most Germanic people still around and compare the result with modern Germans from all over the country, you will find proximity in some regions, and distance in others.
I do not believe in the existence of a Germanic race. The Germanic culture is a recent hybridization that includes Slavics, Celts and Scandinavians. The three are an INTEGRAL part of Germanic culture. Modern day Germany is inhabited by people not related to Historical Germanics. The speak a Germanic language by diffusion, a similar phenomenah to that existing in the Basque country, Basques were expelled from the Basque country by Romans and the region was settled by Celtic tribes that assimilated the culture of those that left by diffusion, so real "ethnic" Basques live in Navarre and the rest of Spain.
The tribes living beyond the Rhine were primitive, almost in the hunting-recollection stage. Almost no agriculture, no cities, small groups of huts in clearings. They were so primitive that they had no Alphabet, just runes, symbols that had some sort of symbolic meaning.
If you do not believe me, you can study all the excavations made during the Nazi period. Hitler spent millions trying to show to Mussolini that ancient Germanics were not a bunch of savages, but he quit after finding only cracked ware and the only sofisticate artifacts found were the products from trade with Roman forts.
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