During the century and a half of Roman rule, the language of Dacia became Latin, and modern Rumanian is without doubt a descendant of that colonial speech. During the maximum extension of the empire, Latin and its derivatives were spoken in a wide zone peripheral to Rome, including the Iberian peninsula, Gaul, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and much of the territory lying between the head of the Adriatic and the Black Sea. Albanian, with its strong Latin infusion, must be considered a partial product of this extension; elsewhere Ladin, Romansch, and Rumanian must be considered survivals in the face of the barbarian invasions which converted most of southeastern Europe to Germanic, Slavic, Uralic, and Altaic speech.
Foreigners designate Rumanians and Rumanian speakers by the term Vlach; the Vlachs are the Rumanian speakers to be found throughout southeastern Europe, whether living in Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, or elsewhere. The word Vlach, which is a derivative from the Gothic, by way of Slavic, means “foreigner”; it is a cognate of our own word “Welsh,” used by the Anglo-Saxons to designate Kymric-speaking Britons, and of “Walloon.” The modern Vlach language, while basically Latin, shares with Albanian certain structural peculiarities which it must derive from Thracian or Illyrian, and at the same time contains a large number of Slavic roots.
The use of a Romance language in Rumania today is not a simple case of a Romanized Dacian survival; the history of Rumania is too complicated to permit this explanation alone. After the departure of the Romans, Dacia was overrun by Goths, by Slavs, by Bulgars, by many kinds of Tatars, and by Ottoman Turks. It is very likely that the Vlach survival in these lands was only partial until the late Middle Ages, when the peasants who had resisted the inroads of these conquerors were joined by their kinsmen returning from Bulgaria and Macedonia, and from beyond the Carpathians. Since then the expansion of the Viachs in what is now Rumania has been constant and, east of the Carpathians, nearly complete.
The Vlachs have always been far wanderers; many of them are shepherds, and the pastoral life has been as important to them, until modern times, as agriculture. In Macedonia and northern Greece, and in Southern Albania, Vlach colonists are nomads living in black tents like those of Arabs, and like those which one may suppose the Scythians used before them. In Dalmatia they were during the Middle Ages an important people. Dubrovnik (Ragusa) was originally a Vlach town. In the peninsula of Istria, now inhabited mostly by Slovenes and Italians, a small group of Vlach speakers, the Čiči, has resisted assimilation to this day. These Istrian Vlachs, early invaders of Illyrian territory, are the remnants of a former link in the continuity of the Roman Empire between the Atlantic and the Black Sea.
In view of the complex ethnic history of Rumania, the living Rumanians may be expected to show evidence of a multiplicity of racial origin. To native Dacian elements, which must have included a blend of indigenous Neolithic peoples with Satem-speaking Nordics, have been added whatever population the Romans brought and which did not run away, and a multitude of early Slavs whom the Vlachs absorbed. Other elements, Ugric, Tatar, and Gothic, were probably of lesser importance.
The mountaineers of Fundul Moldovii, in the Bukovina, are taller than the villagers just studied, with a mean stature, quoted above, of 169.5 cm.; their cephalic index mean is 85.4, while their nasal index reaches the low mean of 60. They are somewhat lighter eyed than the plainsmen, and darker haired. Their heads are broader, with a mean width of 157 mm., rather than shorter, and hence larger. Their faces are longer (124 mm.) and broader (144 mm.), while both foreheads and jaws also exceed those of the Moldavian villagers in breadth, and their nasal lengths (56.4 mm.) are considerably greater. Fifteen per cent have flattened occiputs Although only 20 per cent have convex nasal profiles, in the great majority the forward jut of the nose, accompanied by a straight or wavy profile, is great.
The Fundul Moldovii people are in great majority Dinarics; a few appear Alpine, and a few others Noric. By and large, if the inhabitants of this village were transported to northern Albania and given a change of costume, few anthropologists would be able to tell the difference between the newcomers and the native tribesmen. The inhabitants of Drağuş, farther south and on the Transylvanian side, and no farther from Bucharest than Nerejul Mare, are just as Dinaric metrically as the Bukovinian villagers; their heads are, in fact, shorter, with a mean length of 182 mm., as are their faces; they resemble to a certain extent the Dinaric form common among Serbs.
Leaving the political boundaries of Rumania, we find two groups of Vlachs who have been the subjects of special study; those of Macedonia137 and of Istria.138 The Vlachs of Macedonia are the tallest of the many varied ethnic groups which compose that region, with a mean stature of 168 cm., and have the greatest absolute head length (188 mm.). They are low brachycephals, with a mean cephalic index of 83, are predominantly dark-haired and dark-eyed, and straight-nosed. They show some Dinaric influences, as do all the peoples of Macedonia; on the whole, however, their closest affiliation is with the brunet mesocephals and dolichocephals of the eastern Balkan area. There are, nevertheless, a few blonds among them, and these are usually Nordic.
The Istrian Vlachs, on the other hand, are complete Dinarics with a mean stature of 169 cm., a cephalic index of 86, and head and facial dimensions which cannot be distinguished from those of most Dinarics. In their high brachycephaly, however, and in their facial and nasal lengths, as well as in a predominant brunet tendency, they are much closer to the Tyrolese, and especially to the Ladin-speakers, than to the Slovenes among whom they live. They are also very similar to their distant linguistic relatives in the Carpathians.
The Vlachs, a widespread and numerous people in southeastern Europe, are the descendants of Romanized aborigines, and of other peoples whom these latter have absorbed. They have no racial homogeneity, but vary regionally according to the races long seated in the regions where they live. In the northeast, where the Moldavian plain forms a continuation of the Black Earth region of southern Russia, the Neo-Danubian type of the Black Earth region is predominant; in the southeast, where a local Atlanto-Mediterranean type is concentrated, the Vlachs tend to assume that form; west of the Carpathians, and near the crest of that range, they are Dinarics of the first rank, comparable to that other group of mountain-dwelling speakers of Neo-Latin, the Ladiner.
Originally Posted by Wrong
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