Thracian language

[akritas]

Thracian is a eastern Indo-European language, which was spoken in the Balkans in ancient times but which had apparently extended also into southern Russia ( Jokl 1929:278-98).

The Thraco-Phrygian group had, in the view of Bonfante ( 1939-44), supported by Jakobson, lexical connections with Slavonic.

Archeologically, the conquests of the Iron Age Scyths and their immediate predecessors, the Kimmerians, might have been too transitory to account for the implanting of a new language.

The Late Bronze Age urnfield expansion hardly made a serious penetration of Thracian territory ( Childe 1950, map on p. 182). But in the neolithic this region was occupied by the Mound culture (Gumelnitsa) in Bulgaria ( Gaul 1948:79-207) and by the Tripolye culture in the western Ukraine and northern Romania, both of which were characterized by painted pottery.

Here there were connections both with the Vardar-Morava culture of the southern Balkans and with the simple Danubians farther west. The Vardar-Morava culture represented the beginning of the neolithic in its area, and agricultural settlements were sufficiently fixed to form tells.

So were those of the Mound culture in Bulgaria. But tells did not extend north of the mouths of the Danube. Beyond were the substantial Tripolye villages of large houses, which must have had a considerable degree of permanency.

The fate of these cultures is not altogether clear. According to Childe ( 1947:144; 1950:142) and Gimbutas, this area was conquered at the beginning of the Bronze Age by warlike pastoralists with different burial rites, dwellings, and pottery, some of which was cord marked. For Gimbutas, these conquerors came from the eastern Ukraine and the southern Russian steppe.


But according to Sulimirski ( 1945, 1950) an altered form of the Tripolye culture was, despite this conquest, the basic underlying culture of the Ukraine down to the coming of the Iron Age Scyths. Hence one could suggest that Thracian was connected either with the older agriculturalists of the neolithic in the Balkans or with these conquerors from the steppe.

In conclusion, one might say about these satem languages of eastern Europe that, unlike the centum group, they have less tangible connection with the urnfields and perhaps more association with the peoples of the Eurasian plain, whether steppe pastoralists or river valley farmers.

source:
Indo-European Languages and Archeology by Hugh Hencken

[admin]

Hey Akritas, please post this in the Articles section if you rewrote his ideas. Thanks.

[akritas]

Thracian inscriptions discovered up to now, were written as unseparated words in Greek letters, which creates many difficulties in their interpretation. Four inscriptions are long enough and are of some significance:

1. An inscription on a golden ring from the village of Ezero, Prvomaj district, dating to the 5th c. BC.

2. An inscription on a stone plate from the village of Kjolmen, Preslav district, probably dating to the 4th c. BC.

3. An inscription on a golden ring from the village of Duvanli, Plovdiv district, probably dating to the 5th c. BC.

4. An inscription, repeated four times on four silver vessels discovered in a mound near the same village of Duvanli, dating to the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 4th c. BC.

None from are deciphered.Actually the Bulgarians Dechev and Georgiev have diffrent opinions as about the texts

[Leonatos]

The thracian language is an unknown language today.That 's because the Thracians didn't write down their language apart from some few exceptions,like the inscriptions above.Since they didn't know how to write,they left themselves no written evidence about their culture,their history and their society.So what is known about them today comes only from Greek sources like Herodotos,Thucididis and others.The Greeks very early founded colonies in Thrace like the athenian colony of Hersonesos.The people of Megara founded Byzantion,other Greeks established colonies like Tomis and Odessos at the Black Sea.Later on,the Macedonians established military colonies in Thrace along the route of the main military roads,such as the Philipoi.The Hellenic influence in Thrace was so immense that after some centuries most of the Thracians were hellenised. There were many mixed marriages between thracians and Greek colonists.The hellenisation was also promoted due to the transfer of hellenised population from Asia Minor in Thrace by the Roman emperors.In the late antiquity ,roughly 75% of the population of Thrace were Greeks and the other 25% of the people (mainly in Moesia) spoke Latin.The geographical extent of Thrace was from the Aegean to the Heamus Mt. and from Dardania to the Blach Sea.
The Thracian language is believed by the scholars to have died out some time in the 6th century A.D.,when the slavic,Avar and Bulgar invasions devastated the Byzantine provinces of Moesia and Thrace.
I found some days ago an excellent book,named the Hellenisation of Thrace,written by a Greek researcher called Samsaris.The book was written in the 70s or 80s and i think it is one of the best i have read so far on the matter.
Does anyone else know any good book that deals with the hellenisation of Thrace?

[akritas]

Originally Posted by Leonatos

Does anyone else know any good book that deals with the hellenisation of Thrace?

I suggest the book Konstantinos Vakalopoulos with the main title..History of the Greater Thrace(from the early Othoman rule until 20th cent).We must not forget that the first two decades of the 20 th cent 220.000 Thracian Greeks moved from North and East Thrace.

[Leonatos]

Thank you Akritas.Does this book deal also with the antiquity or just with modern history?I am asking because the time span seems to be from the middle ages until the 20th century.Is there some kind of prologue or introduction about thrace in ancient times?
Konstantinos Vakalopoulos has written also a good book about the history of Macedonia and a very good general history of modern Greece,as far as I remember.