The Daco-Roman Continuity Theory Makes No Sense!

[Mingle]

The common Romanian claim states that Romanians originated north of the Danube in modern day Romania. The claim is that the people living in Romania early on were Dacians. And then these Dacians had their land occupied by Romans and subsequently became Romanized in the short span of Roman occupation of Dacia, thus resulting in modern Romanians being mostly Dacians genetically with some Roman ancestry. But this theory makes no sense upon closer analysis. There are many reasons why, I'll list as many as I can below and then debunk some common claims put forth by the people that support the Daco-Roman continuity theory.

Also, for the record, I was a former supporter of this theory and defended it a lot before on this site. I don't have any reason to support or oppose the Daco-Roman continuity theory. I'm just writing about history as I see it from a third person (non-Romanian, non-Hungarian) perspective and am relatively open minded on the issue since this is a departure from a previous opinion I held.

Roman Dacia

The common Romanian claim states that Romanians originated north of the Danube in modern day Romania. The claim is that the people living in Romania early on were Dacians. And then these Dacians had their land occupied by Romans and subsequently became Romanized in the short span of Roman occupation of Dacia, thus resulting in modern Romanians being mostly Dacians genetically with some Roman. But this theory makes no sense upon closer analysis. There are many reasons why, I'll list as many as I can below. Also, for the record, I was a former supporter of this theory and defended it a lot before. I don't have any reason to support or oppose the Daco-Roman continuity theory. I'm just writing about history as I see it from a third person (non-Romanian, non-Hungarian) perspective.

Romanians can't be descended from Romanized Dacians because the Dacians of Roman Dacia were wiped out by the Romans after they occupied the region. The Dacians were a barbarian tribe that the Romans sought to wipe out after they finished their struggle in subduing them. They were seen as barbarian raiders and Dacia would be difficult to control and colonize with the presence of Dacians. So they ethnically cleansed Roman Dacia of Dacians and replaced the population of Roman Dacia with Romans from the rest of the empire.

VI. After the death of Trajan, Aelius HADRIAN was made emperor, not from any wish to that effect having been expressed by Trajan himself, but through the influence of Plotina, Trajan's wife; for Trajan in his life-time had refused to adopt him, though he was the son of his cousin.41 He also was born at Italica in Spain. Envying Trajan's glory, he immediately gave up three of the provinces which Trajan had added to the empire, withdrawing the armies from Assyria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and deciding that the Euphrates should be the boundary of the empire. When he was |510 proceeding, to act similarly with regard to Dacia, his friends dissuaded him, lest many Roman citizens should be left in the hands of the barbarians, because Trajan, after he had subdued Dacia, had transplanted thither an infinite number of men from the whole Roman world, to people the country and the cities; as the land had been exhausted of inhabitants in the long war maintained by Decebalus.

Source: Eutropius, Abridgement of Roman History

This is later confirmed by the finding of about 3000 personal names from Roman Dacia in 1977. From these, 2000 names are Latin, 420 are Greek, 120 are Illyrian, 70 are Celtic, 70 are Syrian, and a measly 60 are considered to be Dacian. If only a mere 2% of names from Roman Dacia are Dacian, what does that say about the Dacians in the region? Obviously, they got wiped out, which matches what Eutropius said earlier. At most, Romanians are X-Roman, not Daco-Roman ('Dacian' referring exclusively to an ethnicity north of the Danube).

Post-Roman Dacia

Dacia was ruled by Rome for about 165 years (from 106 AD to 271 AD). This is a fairly short time for Romanization of the region. Britain was ruled for more than twice as long, but didn't get Romanized (only did partially in western Britain). And regardless of it did get Romanized, the province was abandoned by the Romans at the end of the third century with no mention of any Romance-speaking population for a whole thousand years while there was mention of other ethnolinguistic groups during that time period. If there was a continuous Romance-speaking population from the Roman conquest of the region up until the next mention of Romance-speakers (13th century), why were they blacked out from all historical record? Isn't 1000 years long enough to document such a presence?

So the question is what happened in that 1000 year period? The Roman withdrawal occurred as a result of constant invasions from "barbarian tribes". They couldn't deal with the barbarian invasions from the mostly Germanic tribes and migrated southwards. The region then ended up being described as mostly Gothic and was called 'Gothia' shortly after the Roman withdrawal from Dacia.

When he too had departed from human affairs, Coryllus ascended the throne as king of the Goths and for forty years ruled his people in Dacia. I mean ancient Dacia, which the race of the Gepidae now possess. (74) This country lies across the Danube within sight of Moesia, and is surrounded by a crown of mountains. It has only two ways of access, one by way of the Boutae and the other by the Tapae. This Gothia, which our ancestors called Dacia and now, as I have said, is called Gepidia, was then bounded on the east by the Roxolani, on the west by the Iazyges, on the north by the Sarmatians and Basternae and on the south by the river Danube. The Iazyges are separated from the Roxolani by the Aluta river only.

As can be seen from the description above given by the 6th century Gothic historian Jordanes (The Origin and Deeds of the Goths, chapter 11), this 'Gothia' and 'Gepidia' correlate to Dacia. It was called 'Gepidia' in Jordanes' time (Gepids are considered a Gothic tribe), but was called just 'Gothia' before. This name 'Gothia' for the region was used by Orosius, who was from the 4th century (less than a century after Roman withdrawal).

A map from around two centuries after Rome's loss of Dacia (476 AD) shows Dacia to be Gothic Gepid territory:


All other sources mentioning the demographics of Dacia (modern western Romania) will refer to it as Gothic/Gepid, Slavic, Hunnic, Bulgar, or Cuman (the last one mainly referring Moldova and Wallachia).

In chapter 5 of the same source, Jordanes describes the demographics better and it shows modern Romania to have been a mix of Gepids and Slavs, but mostly Slavic ('Antes', 'Sclaveni', and 'Venethi' are Slavic subgroups):

In the land of Scythia to the westward dwells, first of all, the race of the Gepidae, surrounded by great and famous rivers. For the Tisia flows through it on the north and northwest, and on the southwest is the great Danube. On the east it is cut by the Flutausis, a swiftly eddying stream that sweeps whirling into the Ister's waters. (34) Within these rivers lies Dacia, encircled by the lofty Alps as by a crown. Near their left ridge, which inclines toward the north, and beginning at the source of the Vistula, the populous race of the Venethi dwell, occupying a great expanse of land. Though their names are now dispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly called Sclaveni and Antes.

If you look for maps from his time period (6th century), they will show Romania as being mostly Slavic:





The 7th century Armenian geographer Ananias of Shirak also wrote that the Slavs inhabited the "large country of Dacia" where they comprised of 25 tribes.

Here is a map from 1190 AD showing modern Romania to be either part of Hungary or Cuman (eastern Romania was conquered by Cumans from the 11th-13th centuries), and even Russian in the far north:


Find any medieval (4th-13th century) map of Europe and it will show a similar political makeup of Romania - as a mix of Hungary, Cumania, and Russia with no reference to Vlachs/Latin-speakers. History in this territory is clearly recorded since we know the political makeup of modern day Romania in that time period, Vlachs are completely missing for some reason, a very common and consistent theme in all these sources.

So with these descriptions of Roman Dacia and post-Roman Dacia, I think we can conclude based on multiple sources that Roman Dacia was not inhabited by ethnic Dacians (due to ethnic cleansing done by Romans) and that post-Roman Dacia was not inhabited by Romance-speaking people at any capacity.

[Mingle]

Migration

So the question is where do Romanians really come from if they aren't descended from the native Dacian population that got Romanized? The most likely explanation is that they are descended from the Romanized population of Thrace (north of the Jireček Line, south of the Danube) that migrated northwards to Dacia.

Although there's no reference to Romance-speakers north of the Danube in the time period mentioned, there aren't either much reference to them south of the Danube either. However, Vlachs are mentioned much earlier south of the Danube (10th century) than north of the Danube (12th century) and Vlachs had a state south of the Danube (12th century - Great Vlachia) earlier than those north of the Danube (14th century - Wallachia). Not only that, but Thrace was ruled by Rome for much longer than Dacia was (reminder that only 2% of names in Roman Dacia were Dacian).

Wiki references some books in their summary of the Romanian migration northwards, but this is the summary given:

Reliable sources refer to the Romanians' presence in the lands to the north of the Danube for the first time in the 1160s. No place names of Romanian origin were recorded where early medieval settlements existed in this area.[198] Here, the Romanians adopted Hungarian, Slavic and German toponyms, also indicating that they arrived after the Saxons settled in southern Transylvania in the mid-12th century.[199][200] The Romanians initially formed scattered communities in the Southern Carpathians, but their northward expansion is well-documented from the second half of the 13th century.[201][202] Both the monarchs and individual landowners (including Roman Catholic prelates) promoted their immigration because the Romanian sheep-herders strengthened the defense of the borderlands, and settled areas which could not be brought into agricultural cultivation.[203][204] The Romanians adopted a sedentary way of life after they started settling on the edge of lowland villages in the mid-14th century.[205] Their immigration continued during the following centuries and they gradually took possession of the settlements in the plains which had been depopulated by frequent incursions.[206][207]

Its no controversy that Romanians expanded from the south to the north within modern Romania (places like Moldova were colonized by Romanians from further south), so why should it be so hard to believe that the ones from southern Romania also came from lands further south?

The 17th century Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi also mentions Romanians migrating from Wallachia to Transylvania in large numbers in his book Seyahatnâme because there was more law and justice in Transylvania compared to the ruthlessness of Romanian lands.

If we look at the etymology of the water course names of Transylvania, we can see that none are descended from Old Romanian. They were all either adopted from other languages into Romanian or in some cases have an unknown etymology (since Romanian is a Latinate language, this unknown language can't be native Romanian). Not a single one was adopted from Proto-Romanian (Latin dialect):


The earliest confirmed Romanian toponyms (not Romanian people, but Romanian language toponyms) in the Kingdom of Hungary:
1337: Căprioara
1366: Lupșa
1377: Rușor
1394: Nucșoara

Keep in mind that the Romanian name for Transylvania, Ardeal, is derived from the Hungarian Erdély, and not a native name of Old Romanian origin.

Below is an image documenting early Romanian migrations to Transylvania. As can be seen from it, Romanians first started migrated in the early 13th century and Romanian settlements began to appear towards the end of the century:


Furthermore, we know that Transylvania was ruled by Catholic Hungary for centuries after barbarian (Gothic-Slavic) rule i.e. successors of Roman Dacia. How would it be majority Romanian Orthodox when ruled by Catholic Hungary for centuries? I mean, the Hungarians even led a crusade to Catholicize Bosnia (Bosnian Crusade), so does it make sense that they would leave a supposedly "Orthodox" Transylvania alone? Hungary ruled Transylvania for centuries and somehow it was the only region to avoid assimilation and conversion when the rest of Hungary didn't?

If this isn't enough, there is also a Romanian source (Cantecuzino's Chronicle) written in the 1700s that discusses it:

Insă dintâi izvodindu-se de rumânii carii s-au despărțit de la romani şi au pribegit spre miiazănoapte. Deci trecând apa Dunării, au descălecat la Turnul Severinului; alții în Țara Ungurească, pre apa Oltului, şi pre apa Morășului, şi pre apa Tisei ajungând şi până la Maramurăș. Iar cei ce au descălecat la Turnul Severinului s-au tins pre supt poalele muntelui până în apa Oltului; alții s-au pogorât pre Dunăre în jos. Și așa umplându-se tot locul de ei, au venit până în marginea Necopoei.

Translated to English:

But first let's talk about the Romanians, who broke away from the Romans (i.e. Byzantines) and migrated north. So they moved towards the waters of the Danube, crossed at Turnu Severin; some to Hungary to the waters of the Olt, the waters of the Mureş, the waters of the Tisza, reaching as far as Maramures. And those who crossed at Turnu Severin reached the foot of the mountains at the water of the Olt. Some went down along the Danube and thus filled the whole place with them and came to the border of Necopoi.

Some info about the source:

The Cantacuzino or Cantacuzène family is a Romanian aristocratic family that gave several Princes of Wallachia and Moldavia, descending from a branch of the Byzantine Kantakouzenos family, specifically from the Byzantine Emperor[1] John VI Kantakouzenos (reigned 1347–1354).

So from this, we can see that there was a migration of Romance-speaking people from south of the Danube northwards into modern Romania.

Is there even a Romanian source earlier than the 1700s that mentions Romanians migrating from the north to the south like they claim happened?

[Mingle]

Linguistics

This is probably the smoking gun evidence.

As much as you want to deny the other points above, it is completely impossible for a Romanian origin to make sense north of the Danube from a linguistic point of view, mainly based on the similarities between Romanian and Albanian.

Based on the common features of Romanian and Albanian, these two languages must have had an early point of contact. This means that the Old Romanian speaking area and Old Albanian-speaking area must have bordered each other.

The Tosk dialect of Albanian, spoken in Southern Albania, in particular is held to have experienced developments parallel to early Romanian. These notably include the centralization of /a/ before nasals, rhotacism of intervocalic /n/ (regular in Tosk, more limited in Romanian : see LAMINA > lamura). Some words of the shared Albanian–Romanian lexicon, such as vatra/vatră, in Romanian clearly agree with the Tosk form and not the Gheg (northern) Albanian form. The proposed interaction between Tosk and Romanian is held to have been the last stage of the crucial Albanian–Romanian period of convergence. Since these effects are marginal if present at all upon Slavic loans, they likely occurred before contact with Slavs.[24]

Other features dated to the breakup of Romance languages that are shared between Albanian and Romanian include the merger of long /eː/ and short /i/, but not long /oː/ and short /u/ (most Romance languages either merged both or neither), and the replacement of /k/ in clusters /ks/ and /kt/ with a labial (p in Romanian, f in Albanian: see luctare > Albanian luftoj, Romanian lupta; Latin coxa > Albanian kofshë, Romanian coapsă). In the latter case, variation in Albanian outcomes has been explained as being the effect of loans entering Albanian at different times.[25]

When comparing the morphological elements of the four core languages of the Balkan linguistic area, scholars have concluded that Albanian and Romanian share most common features.[23] Albanian and Romanian use postponed articles with proper names, while this feature is absent from Bulgarian and Macedonian.[23]


There are several hundred words in Romanian that are cognate only with Albanian cognates (see Substrate in Romanian), [26] though by lower estimates there are 70–90 possible substrate words with Albanian cognates,[27][28] and 29 terms are probably loanwords from Albanian.[29]

To summarize:

1. There are words common only to Albanian and Romanian within Balkan languages.
2. There is a similar development of Latin in Albanian and Romanian.
3. Romanian is more similar to South Albanian than to North Albanian.

Considering that there is some linguistic diversity in East Romance south of the Danube and 0 linguistic diversity north of the Danube and Romanian is more similar to Tosk than to Gheg (in addition to historical evidence posted above), it makes much more sense to say that East Romance originated south of the Danube.

Its interesting to note that there is virtually 0 linguistic diversity in the Romanian language. All of Romanian is basically a single dialect with regional accents comparable to American English. This points to a recent expansion. If East Romance originated in Dacia, then Romanian should be more linguistically diverse. In fact, there are four East Romance dialects spoken south of the Danube despite being in a much smaller number. There are three Aromanian dialects and one Meglenoromanian dialect. Its pretty much unheard of for the linguistic point of origin to have 0 linguistic diversity.

So it should be no surprise that the designated areas of origin for Romanian and Albanian are all south of the Danube and none are north of it:

[Mingle]

Genetics

According to available DNA results, there is a genetic difference between the Hungarian Szeklers of Transylvania and the Romanians of Transylvania. The Szeklers are genetically different from both Transylvanian Romanians and Hungary Hungarians (but closer to the latter), which makes sense given their geography. But Transylvanian Romanians hardly differ at all from most other Romanians. Since Szeklers are genetically distant to Transylvanian Romanians, they can't be "Hungarized Vlachs". And they aren't either imports from Hungary. Romanians being transplants from other provinces is possible though given the very small genetic differences between the Romanians of Transylvania and other regions (like Wallachia).





And for Romanians, their population genetics show that the ones with the least Slavic admix are those from Wallachia and the ones further north gradually get a little bit more Slavic admixture. This indicates an expansion from Wallachia into Transylvania, not the other way around. If Romanians originated in Roman Dacia (Transylvania), then the "purest" Romanians should be found in Transylvania rather than Wallachia.

[Mingle]

Daco-Romanian Continuity Arguments

Dacian Loanwords

Some argue that the existence of Dacian loanwords shows that it was inherited from the Dacian ancestors of Romanian. We know almost nothing about Dacian besides its toponyms. So if we don't know what the language is like, how can we say with certainty that these loanwords in Romanian are from Dacian and not Thracian? All we know is that these words are from an unknown IE language. Its presumptuous to conclude these must be Dacian words and can't be Thracian or even Illyrian.

Gesta Hungarorum

Another argument is that Gesta Hungarorum mentions Vlachs centuries before the immigrationist theory states that Romanians entered (9th century). This doesn't make sense for many reasons, but the simplest explanation to this is that the anonymous author that mentions Romanians existing this early wrote Gesta Hungarorum centuries after the mentioned time period. His work is dated to the 13th century, which is about four centuries after the time period his novel is written in. Add to that this isn't even a history book, but an obviously fictitious novel. So because a fictitious novel mentions that Romanians existed four centuries before it was written means that they existed in that time period? Right...

But the historical inaccuracies don't end there. Not only was Anonymous making up Vlachs living in Transylvania in the 9th century before Hungarians came, he also claimed that Hungarians descend from Scythians and that Cumans lived in Transylvania in the 9th century (they first arrived in the late 11th century). Other claims are Attila being the forefather of Hungarians (even though he was a Hun and not a Scythian) and that Hungarians [Scythians] defeated Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, and Alexander the Great. While Scythians did fight those groups, they weren't victorious most of the time. And it makes no sense for the ancestors of Hungarians to have fought Cyrus and co. since they traveled from the western side of the Urals to Middle Europe. There is also reference to fictitious kings that could not have possibly existed (such as "Gelou, a certain Vlach").

so to write for you of the genealogy [genealogia] of the kings of Hungary and of their noblemen: how the seven leading persons, who are called the Hetumoger, came down from the Scythian land, what that Scythian land was like and how Duke Álmos was born and why Álmos, from whom the kings of Hungary trace their origin, is called the first duke of Hungary, and how many realms and rulers they conquered and why the people coming forth from the Scythian land are called Hungarians in the speech of foreigners but Magyars [Mogerii] in their own

The Scythian people were never subjugated by any emperor. For the Scythians made Darius, king of the Persians, flee with the greatest ignominy, and Darius lost there 80,000 men and so fled in great fear to Persia. Next, the Scythians slew Cyrus, king of Persia, with 330,000 men. Next, the Scythians put to base flight even Alexander the Great himself, the son of King Philip and Queen Olympias, who had conquered many kingdoms in war.

Then they chose to seek for themselves the land of Pannonia that they had heard from rumour had been the land of King Attila, from whose line Duke Álmos, father of Árpád, descended.

Also, as can be seen from the last quote, it is claimed in Gesta Hungarorum that Hungarians were originally from Pannonia but left it and were simply taking back what was theirs (from the Slavs, Cumans, and Vlachs). So it doesn't claim that Vlachs were there first. It claims that Hungarians were there first, then some other people (Vlachs included) came there, and Hungarians took it back in the 9th century. None of this is true though.

So as you can see, Gesta Hungarorum, is more or less a history themed fantasy novel and can't be used as a legitimate historical source. Some things in it are correct because they are collaborated by other external sources, but treating the whole text as accurate history is wrong. If you want to use this text to prove the nativity of Romanians to Transylvania, then you also have to accept what was quoted above (including the part about Pannonia being the land of Attila - forefather of Hungarians). According to Gesta Hungarorum, this was the reason they specifically invaded Pannonia. You can't pick and choose whatever fits your narrative and ignore the rest. Either accept all of this unverifiable nonsense or none of it.

Galerius

Some Romanians talk about Dacian identity surviving later than expected because of the quote of a Roman emperor named Galerius where he supposedly calls himself a Dacian. The person that this source comes from is Lactantius. According to Lactantius, Galerius was a Dacian nationalist that wanted to take revenge against the Roman Empire and would treat Romans with cruelty as a way to try to give them a taste of their own medicine for what Trajan did to his Dacian ancestors.

However, there is reason to believe that this is not true. The man being cited here is Lactantius, a North African Christian missionary who would have disliked a pagan like Lactantius since he was said to be anti-Christian. He even claimed that Lactantius' death was divine justice for his persecution of Christians (mentioned in his text De mortibus persecutorum). So he would have every reason to write against him.

Intro to Lactantius:

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus signo Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence,[1] and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutiones Divinae ("The Divine Institutes"), an apologetic treatise intended to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity to pagan critics.

But was he even a Dacian? Highly unlikely. Besides this source, there aren't other sources that refer to him or his parents as being Dacians. He wasn't even born in the historical region of Dacia in modern Transylvania, but in Serdica, modern Bulgaria (historically part of the Thrace region). Serdica, his place of birth and death, however was part of the province named Dacia Ripensis (even though it was in modern Bulgaria and not historically Dacian territory). This is most likely the reason why Lactantius referred to Galerius as a Dacian.

If you look at a Roman administrative map of the Balkans during Galerius' time period, you will notice that the region they called 'Dacia' back then was south of the Danube and does not correlate to the borders of Roman Dacia at all:



So to sum it up, the person claiming that Galerius was an anti-Roman Dacian nationalist was a religious Christian that had reason to hate Galerius and would have had reasons to want Romans to share his opinion. There are no testimonies of Galerius identifying as Dacian, but Lactantius could have assumed he was a Dacian based on the name of the province he was born in.

Roman Churches and Coins

According to the Daco-Roman continuity theory, the existence of churches and coins in the middle ages confirms continuous Roman presence. This is a pretty weak theory. It just confirms some early Roman presence, not continuous Roman presence. Not sure how this is an argument.

There have been coins found outside the empire, so their presence in the former Roman province of Dacia after the Roman withdrawal doesn't say much. There were Roman coins found in Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, India, China, and a host of other places never part of the Roman Empire at any point in history. And a lot of these lands would've been considered "barbarian" by Romans. So the existence of Roman coins in the former Roman province of Dacia is not proof of anything.

Also, the successors of Roman Dacia were the Gepids. Although they were pagan for a while, they were following the [considered heretic nowadays] Arianist sect of Christianity, specifically from the time period of Alaric I onwards. And Christianity continued to be followed in some form or another afterwards. So if there was continued presence of churches after Aurelian's withdrawal from Dacia, it doesn't mean that it must have been from Roman Christians since not all Christians were Romans.

Massive Population Movement

Whether you want to accept it or not, there are descriptions about Romanians migrating from Thrace to modern Romania. And toponymic evidence confirms that Romanians were virtually nonexistent north of the Danube before the 13th century when they are confirmed to have arrived and began their settlements. Some people opposing the immigration theory argue that the population was at an insignificant scale because there aren't references to a massive exodus of people coming into modern Romania from south of the Danube and such a massive population couldn't have all secretly happened (even though it was far from secret). But there doesn't need to be a massive population movement for Romanians to achieve their current numbers. Its entirely possible for a few thousand people to produce several millions. For example, Quebec has almost 10 million people today, but they descend from only a few thousand French settlers. And this migration wouldn't have all occurred in a single go anyways.

[CommonSense]

Well done, top quality post! The best one I've read on TA for quite a while.

It's a shame Romanians cling on so desperately to the psuedo-historical continuity theory, out of no other reason but blind nationalism and the clash with Hungarians in regards to who is the rightful 'owner' of Transylvania/Ardeal. The extent of the denial that nothing remained of the former Roman Dacia went so far that an 'esteemed' Romanian professor and historian, Florian Curta, wrote an entire book dedicated to proving how Slavs were nothing more but an ethno-cultural identity made up by Byzantines/Romans. Another claim that's easly debunked both by modern population genetics and archaeogenetic research.

Anyhow, it's going to be difficult to provide counterarguments to this whole thing. The unique linguistic connection between Romanians and Albanians that was explained and proven in detail long ago as well as the more recent knowledge that the "purest", least-Slavic Romanians reside in the regions by the Danube, clearly indicating a northward expansion, pretty much make the migration theory ironclad. The other arguments and counterarguments you listed are simply icing on the cake.

[Bigby]

Linguistics

This is probably the smoking gun evidence.

As much as you want to deny the other points above, it is completely impossible for a Romanian origin to make sense north of the Danube from a linguistic point of view, mainly based on the similarities between Romanian and Albanian.

Based on the common features of Romanian and Albanian, these two languages must have had an early point of contact. This means that the Old Romanian speaking area and Old Albanian-speaking area must have bordered each other.



To summarize:

1. There are words common only to Albanian and Romanian within Balkan languages.
2. There is a similar development of Latin in Albanian and Romanian.
3. Romanian is more similar to South Albanian than to North Albanian.

Considering that there is some linguistic diversity in East Romance south of the Danube and 0 linguistic diversity north of the Danube and Romanian is more similar to Tosk than to Gheg (in addition to historical evidence posted above), it makes much more sense to say that East Romance originated south of the Danube.

Its interesting to note that there is virtually 0 linguistic diversity in the Romanian language. All of Romanian is basically a single dialect with regional accents comparable to American English. This points to a recent expansion. If East Romance originated in Dacia, then Romanian should be more linguistically diverse. In fact, there are four East Romance dialects spoken south of the Danube despite being in a much smaller number. There are three Aromanian dialects and one Meglenoromanian dialect. Its pretty much unheard of for the linguistic point of origin to have 0 linguistic diversity.

So it should be no surprise that the designated areas of origin for Romanian and Albanian are all south of the Danube and none are north of it:

> As much as you want to deny the other points above, it is completely impossible for a Romanian origin to make sense north of the Danube from a linguistic point of view, mainly based on the similarities between Romanian and Albanian.

> Based on the common features of Romanian and Albanian, these two languages must have had an early point of contact. This means that the Old Romanian speaking area and Old Albanian-speaking area must have bordered each other.


And why would Romania have to be the one more northern and not Albania too southern for its modern position?

In fact, the consensus is that modern albanians originated in a place neighbouring Romania and no theory so far of romanians originating in a place other than the modern one has ever been proven.

Btw, if you've ever read books regarding the subject, you'd know that there are plenty of evidence(archaelogical, documents etc..) proving the transition from the conquered dacians to romans. I don't care about later imports: turkics, slavs etc...

[Bigby]

Genetics

According to available DNA results, there is a genetic difference between the Hungarian Szeklers of Transylvania and the Romanians of Transylvania. The Szeklers are genetically different from both Transylvanian Romanians and Hungary Hungarians (but closer to the latter), which makes sense given their geography. But Transylvanian Romanians hardly differ at all from most other Romanians. Since Szeklers are genetically distant to Transylvanian Romanians, they can't be "Hungarized Vlachs". And they aren't either imports from Hungary. Romanians being transplants from other provinces is possible though given the very small genetic differences between the Romanians of Transylvania and other regions (like Wallachia).

And for Romanians, their population genetics show that the ones with the least Slavic admix are those from Wallachia and the ones further north gradually get a little bit more Slavic admixture. This indicates an expansion from Wallachia into Transylvania, not the other way around. If Romanians originated in Roman Dacia (Transylvania), then the "purest" Romanians should be found in Transylvania rather than Wallachia.

> And for Romanians, their population genetics show that the ones with the least Slavic admix are those from Wallachia and the ones further north gradually get a little bit more Slavic admixture.


Romanians never originated in Transilvania, I dont know who told you this lie.

Szekelers are different than romanians and from hungarians from Hungary but closer to romanians, because they lack the heavy germanic influence that hungarians from Hungary have today and it just happened that the medieval szekels ressembled romanians more than modern hungarians + they lived in the same region hence would've been affected by later migrations here too. By the way, many szeklers today are mixed with hungarians from Hungary or others like austrians, it's almost the norm.

[Bigby]

Well done, top quality post! The best one I've read on TA for quite a while.

It's a shame Romanians cling on so desperately to the psuedo-historical continuity theory, out of no other reason but blind nationalism and the clash with Hungarians in regards to who is the rightful 'owner' of Transylvania/Ardeal. The extent of the denial that nothing remained of the former Roman Dacia went so far that an 'esteemed' Romanian professor and historian, Florian Curta, wrote an entire book dedicated to proving how Slavs were nothing more but an ethno-cultural identity made up by Byzantines/Romans. Another claim that's easly debunked both by modern population genetics and archaeogenetic research.

Anyhow, it's going to be difficult to provide counterarguments to this whole thing. The unique linguistic connection between Romanians and Albanians that was explained and proven in detail long ago as well as the more recent knowledge that the "purest", least-Slavic Romanians reside in the regions by the Danube, clearly indicating a northward expansion, pretty much make the migration theory ironclad. The other arguments and counterarguments you listed are simply icing on the cake.

The fact that albanian has common words with romanian has no relevance for Romania, if anything, it strengthens the idea of continuity. Why? Because some dacian words also have meanings in modern albanian and those common words that we have are largely believed to be of dacian origin and dacians never lived on the Adriatic coast. This argument is used against albanians, not against romanians. There are books detailing this.

And "danube romanians" are no benchmark for anything, they're mongrels in-between many ethnicities and secondly, wallachians are the most southern romanians(by little) cause they border bulgarians and didnt have the norhtern minorities that other regions had. Romania is a large country, nobody claimed "pure daco-roman" ancestry, just a common denominator. Btw, transilvaneans by look are really unslavic, more than wallachians, dinarid faces are the norm and majority have higher NA than baltic and high amounts of r1b.

[Ion Basescul]

Migration

So the question is where do Romanians really come from if they aren't descended from the native Dacian population that got Romanized? The most likely explanation is that they are descended from the Romanized population of Thrace (north of the Jireček Line, south of the Danube) that migrated northwards to Dacia.

Why go so far though? Scythians from Moldova, who in reality were probably Geto-Dacians, where as Southern as the Iron Age Thracian from Bulgaria. Then the Slavic element came into the mix and changed Romanians to where they are today genetically.

Thrace is South of the Jirecek line btw, which doesn't make any sense, as Romanian would have been loaded with Greek words.