Are Balkan Slavs Slavicized Romanians?

[Bosniensis]

Let's be realistic here, they're at least just as savage as we are.

We are not savage, we are just aggressive, they are savage.

[Jana]

Let's be realistic here, they're at least just as savage as we are.

I find Eastern Euro orthodox members really cool and likable.

[Pribislav]

Croatians are exponent of Papacy/Jesuitism in the Balkans. Their madness mostly came from that side.

[Ford]

I is celt too. Also explains why my father gets 15% Irish, Scottish, and Welsh on MyHeritage and I get half of that % with my uploaded raw data.

Mine just says Urnfield Celtic and 3300 - 3100 years before present.

[Pribislav]

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[Terminator98]

Imagine EU Parliament being 60% Serbs, Romanians, Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Albanian, Greek and Turkish while other half being everyone else

who would dominate... imagine topics:

1. Albanians claiming Greeks stole their history
2 Croats want resolution against Serbs
3. Monenegrins asking for recognition of their Church by EU Parliament
4. Romanians demanding their Romance being superior to all others.
5. Turks want resolution to legalize Armenian genocide.
6. Greeks claim that Thor was their god.

In meanwhile Serbian and Bosnian members would drink rakija and eat cevapi.

[Pribislav]

Island Greeks are also much more decent than mainland Greek members. Visible Med cultural influence.

Med culture make pusies from men.

Compare Morlaks from Dalmatian hinterland with coastal Fetivi and islander Boduli. Morlaks were wild but noble, great warriors and honorable. Fetivi and Boduli were infected with Venetian view on the world, and prone to trade (trade was devil's work in the eyes of Morlaks).
Same relation as between Dalmatians from hinterland and coast/islands was between Montenegrin higlanders from Old Montenegro and people of coastal Montenegro. Montenegrins (highlanders) called coastals "Lacmani" and considered them for dirty merchants, Venetian puppets, bad warriors, and two-faced people.
Pelopennesian highlanders were comparable with Montenegrins and Morlak Dalmatians.

[Papură Vodă]

Hello. Good question. I tried reading some of these replies here but i haven't found any to be consistent enough, but rather people satisfied to only give short politicised claims. Here's my take on this. The first thing to understand is that the balkans is a powderkeg waiting to explode, i am a nationalist myself, however, the nationalist awakening in the 19th century to this day went to extremes, in that people choose to be so egocentristic to the point where they bend reality itself to fit their nationalistic agenda. Just trying to understand the history of romania alone has brought me to this conclusion. As a history enthusiast, i personaly tried to be as objective as i could any time i tried to understand any historical aspect. This was something i wanted to mention before giving you an answer.

Are southern slavs slavicised vlachs or the way you put it, slavicised romanians? let's answer first what is slavic? slavic is first and foremost, a language group, not a race, not an ethnicity, it's a language group. Think for example, the celts, they were represented from the british isles, to the mediteranean and as far south east as anatolia? how come? well, the most honest conclusion is simply that cultures and languages can spread from a group to another, it isn't necesarily tied to one group, one tribe in particular. Here, think of romance languages for example, northern french, southern europeans and romanians are not the same, they don't look the same, their culture is not the same, yet they belong to the same language group. Or maybe the best example i can give, the indo europeans. some people thought all europeans originate with them, but that's not true, since anthopological archeology prooves european ancestors were all over the place in europe already, so what the indo-europeans did was simply to homogenise a language a culture and religion across two continents, amongst europeans, middle easterners and south asians. How was that possible? i don't know but the conclusion we must draw from this is that communities are not closed, but rather open to migrations and change as well, as sad as this may be from a modern nationalist perspective, it's the truth unfortunately. so, in conclusion, when you say 'slavs', we strictly speak here about people speaking a slavic language, not necessarily of people who are of proto-balto-slavic stock.

Second thing to ask ourselves, who are the vlachs and what is their relation to romanians? Vlachs are mentioned first by byzantine sources as being ''roman shepherds'', from that we can draw the conlusion vlach was a pastoralist balkanic population that spoke an eastern romance language. There are other sources, some slavic ones, some presumably varangian one (the blakkumen stone) and others, but i try to avoid these because there is political disagreement. One important thing to understand about the word ''vlach'' and its derivations (vlah, blach, vlax, vlași, valah, wallach, olah etc etc) these are all exonymes, for example we call germans ''german'' but they call themselves 'deutsch', word rooted in 'teuton'. Vlachs historicaly called themselves either by the region they were coming from, or generaly as 'rumân' in the case of romanians (whom were also called vlachs until the unification of the romanian principalities in the 19th century), term also used in some cases by vlachs south of danube, however most often they used arumân or simply armân. it's a thing they do south of danube with placing 'a' in front of words and inverting last two letters. Where do these pastoralist vlach populations come from? they just simply appear out of nowhere in the sources by the 6th century? well, it may seem so, but let's think logicaly, those people are not fallen from the sky, and they still exist today, most representative group being romanians, but the others are still alive and well in countries like serbia, bulgaria, macedonia, albania, greece and the rest of the balkans. they still speak their languages, they're still shepherds, so what conclusion can we draw from this? is that the vlach presence in the balkans was always important, even if often neglected by the sources simply because these were rustic people minding their own sheep, while greeks and bulgarians dominated religious and thus some cultural aspects, while slavic and western turkic people dominated military. What are the vlachs more exactly? well, personaly, and it seems many people agree with me as well, but these are simply romanised ancient balkanic populations. why do i say romanised? because they speak a romance language. why do i say ancient balkanic people? because they have the same pastoral culture and same cloathing. the same sheepskin hat, the same sheepskin cloak, the same tunic, the same thic belt, the same opanak shoes were woren by vlachs and these ancient populations alike. this is my conclusion in regards to vlachs.

Now, are southern slavs slavicised vlachs? It's a hard question that i doubt has a straight answer, and it's one that it is bound to be answered with colourful nationalistic biased replies. Personaly, i have a tendancy to say yes, let me elaborate. I don't know why slavs migrated south, but i know that many of these slavs were of ruthenian stock, or white russian. they differ in a way from novgorid russians and moscovites more specificaly through their cloathing, which is a white tunic and white pants, quite similar to the vlachs, but using different belts and slavic motifs. The other important migration in the balkans is that of turkic populations like the avars, the pechenegs, the cumans etc, who also shifted slav political reforms and military habbits as well. but one things to understand is that these were not ''turkish'' as we understand today, these were mainly people like the southern russians today and like the ukranians living in their stepps, likely of the same stock as the ancient sarmatians and scythians, and even if somehow they weren't, they surely did bare many cultural similarities. it's these turkic (who again, wren't turks like middles eastern anatolians or eurasians kazakhs, uyghurs etc, but eastern europeans) tribes that ruled over slavic populations, plus ruthenians that migrated maybe to get out of their way? i don't know, but one thing is, it's in this context that many slavs found themselves in the balkans, and obviously, they had to get into contact with the vlachs. These slavic populations were important indeed, as noted by a byzantine source claiming there were slavs cmaped, grass grew no more, implying they were very numerous. In any case, it's impossible that the vlachs and the slavs didn't talk to eachother, didn't trade etc etc. they were both rustic people, they were quite similar in cloathing, so other than the language, these people had no reason to fight, plus, the early rulers ruling over vlachs and slavs alike were speaking a turkic language, neither romance nor slavic, it's only later that the pechenegs the cumans etc got absorbed and became slavicised. if you want to learn more about this, just look at the disagreements that the bulgarians and the romanians have in regards to the second bulgarian empire and the huge fight in regards to the ethnicity of the people who were in charge of the revolts. But let's put this aside for a moment and think only about the people. the vlachs and the slavs obviosly lived side by side, they mutualy influenced one another and they obviosly intermarried. it's this mix that gave the modern balkan states and it's this mix especialy that makes up romania, bulgaria and serbia especialy. The only difference is that north of danube there was a romanization process, while south of danube there was a slavicisation process.

What about the mix? is it more vlach than slav, is it half and half aproximately, or is it more slav than vlach? depending on what political agenda the person in front of you has, you'll get different answers, but personaly i'd tend to say the population is more 'vlach', by which i simply mean ancient balkanic. Why do i say this? if you watch a haplogroup map, southern slavs are neither like eastern europeans, neither like central europeans, you'll see, although varied, the majority is made up of l2, so to me this shows these people are closer to one another, they're more balkanic than anything else, not eastern european, not meds. But let me give you much better example than the haplogroups, which i personaly take most of the time with a grain of salt. Culture and language. Please go and compare traditional cloathing of the slavs to that of the balkan slavs, than compare it to that of the romanians and aromanians or vlachs however you want to call them, to which one is more similar? who else in europe is wearing opanak shoes and who did so historicaly if not only the balkan populations, ancient and modern alike. Look up cuisine, look up traditional dances, look up folk stories, look up common history, and the more you will dwelve into this, the more you will see that the balkan slavs are not like the rest of the slavs at all, but they are closest to romanians, and viceversa, romanians, are not latins, they have most in common with bulgaria and serbia. to put it simply, think like this, southern slavs are as slavic as romanians are latin, which is, not at all, they're their own thing while belonging to language groups to which culturaly and by blood as well they are foreign. As for languages, here one thing, romanain has been influenced quite heavily by slavic languages, whilst the southern slavic languages don't show the same percent of mutual influence. Keep in mind that the romanian language is still latin in proportion to 70% or so, modern estimates will show a higher degree, 80% or so, but that is because of modern latin neologisms which we adopted after the 19th century in an effort to syncronise with the west and go from medieval to modern people (which was an utter mistake and very stupid as far as i am personaly concerned). So when may think that this may be because the slavic presence was more important, but here's how i see. Despite foreign rulership in the early days during the ethnogenesis of the romanian people, despite church being dominated by bulgarians and being preached in old slavonic as well, despite great slavic migration, romanian still preserved itself, and so did southern dialects, who were even more endangered than romanian, at least we got to rule ourselves by the 13th century, southern romance speakers never had an ethno state of their own, and still, they kept their culture, their customs and their language to this very day, and it is a very important minority in the balkans anywhere you go. True, they are a dieing minority, but that it is because of nationalist policy that keeps shaking europe ever since the 19th century (this is the exact same reason why for example breton people in france are losing their insular celtic identity and language).

So, in conlusion, because of everything i stated above, i would say Southern slavs are of ancient balkanic stock, which indeed at the time of the slavic migration in the balkans was mainly represented by the vlachs, and it's this relativaly light mix that gave birth to the ethno genesis of the romanians, bulgarians and serbs. As for language and how things came to be, i don;t know, try to find someone bold enough to claim to understand how people of different tribes, different stock etc adopt different languages.

[artsi]

First of all Romanian nation is a modern, 19th century creation from Valahians, part of the Moldavians, Transylvanian Valachians and Banat Valachians. Also the Albanians are a proof that not all the ancient tribes of the Balkans were romanized and were probably Slavicized after the year 600. A better question will be if the Balkan Slavs are slavicized Vlachs. Some of them are, in 1850 there were still massive compact Vlach communities in todays Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...%281861%29.jpg

No taking into account the Vlachs that assimilated linguistically in the previous centuries and are claimed by the Blakan Slavs, like the Vlachs of Bosnia for example.

[FinalFlash]

Let's see some Vahaduo results for all Balkan ethnicties using Slavic and non-Slavic components.