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Originally Posted by chicagogeorge My only question is how different are the Dacians than the Thracians I always thought they that the Dacians were a northern branch of the Thracians.?? |
Most scholars see the Dacians as "northern Thracians" yes. don't forget that the term Thracians is how the Greeks named them ...because of their "redish-blond" hair (color of the fire : πυρρός , color of incandescent carbon = Θραξ).
We dont even know if all the Thracians were one linguistic group. The never were a united nation (exception the Odryssian kingdom , but it didn't included ALL the Thracians) and we don't know the exact relationship with the Moesians , Paeonians , Dacians , Dardanians.
All this people have left little linguistic evidence and we are more trapped , because we know them fro mthe greek sources...and the Greeks named "Thracians" who ever dwelt North East of them and "Illyrians" who ever dwelt North West of them.
For example , for the ancient Greeks the Dardanians were Illyrians , for modern scholars they were so until 1960 , after that they are seeing mostly like Thracians.
The truth is that we can only make "hypothesis".
1) Were the Illyrians one linguistic group that reached from Albania to Slovenia ??
2) What were the exact borders between Illyrians and Thracians in the central balkans ??
3) Instead of the classic balkan linguistic "bipartition" Illyrian-Thracians (West-East) is it more suitable to talk about linguistic "tripartition" :
West: Illyrians & Libournians (Veneti)
Central: Dardanians , Paeonians , Moesians
East: Thracians & Dacians
4) What is the exact relation between Dardanians and Dardanelia (Trojans) ??
5) Wha tis the exact relation between Moesians in Central Balkans and Mysians in Asia Minor ??
6) Among the Thracians do we have balkan remnants ("pockets") of the IE "anatolians" ??
Krestonians and Bottians are perfect candidates : About the first Herodotus tells us that their language was different from all the other "Thracians" , and about the second we know that they worshipped the double ax symbol and that's why were considered by Strabo as Minoic colonists from Crete , but the double ax was a common symbol in all the anatolians (Lydians included) and the basic river of Bottia was and still is called Lydias.