| Revision as of 18:52, 27 October 2019 editAndrew Lancaster (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers40,385 edits →Past tense?← Previous edit | Latest revision as of 16:10, 19 January 2025 edit undoAndrew Lancaster (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers40,385 edits →Did the first Franks live near the Weser? | ||
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| == conflation of franks with visigoths? == | |||
| I made a change (838551115) which was reverted (838551115) and which I have again reverted and this is my attempt to prevent it from being reverted again. apologies if I am not doing the bureaucracy part of this correctly, I typically just make drive-by corrections | |||
| the previous version of the line in question was "Against Germanic tradition, each of the four sons of Clovis attempted to secure power in different cities but their inability to prove themselves on the battlefield and intrigue against one another led the Visigoths back to electing their leadership." which seems to confuse two different subjects with each other. the source (bauer 178-179, https://books.google.com/books?id=1u2oP2RihIgC&q=amalaric#v=snippet&q=amalaric&f=false) briefly discusses the frankish succession and resulting civil war among clovis's four sons, then _by way of example_ tells of amalaric, who became king of the _visigoths_, some two decades later, before being killed for incompetence and replaced by an elected warleader. somehow these two different events, tribes, and individuals were merged into the one sentence, which I have removed | |||
| == Scope of the article == | |||
| The ], ], ] and other ancient peoples have disappeared from history, and the introduction to articles on these peoples on Misplaced Pages therefore states who these peoples ''were''. ], ], ] and others are still around, so the introduction to their Misplaced Pages articles states who these peoples ''are''. According to scholars, Germanic peoples are still around too, but this article treats them as an historical people á la Tocharians, Illyrians and Thracians. Here are some scholarly citations on the time frame of the subject of Germanic peoples: | |||
| * ] in ]: "The Germanic, or Teutonic, peoples '''are''' a branch of the Indo-Europeans." | |||
| * ]: "Germanic... a group of N European peoples including the Germans, Scandinavians, Dutch, English, etc., or the peoples from whom they are descended." | |||
| * ] & ]: "In German we have the following terms at our disposal: Germanisch and Germanen ; Deutsch and Deutsche. It is not easy to find convenient equivalents in English for these terms. Deutsch and Deutsche are easily rendered as 'German' and 'Germans' and Germanisch as ''''Germanic'''', but Germanen presents problems, since it lacks a precise single-word equivalent in English. It '''is a collective term referring to the peoples who speak the modern Germanic languages, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, English, Frisians, Dutch and Germans, and to the ancestors of these peoples'''. 'Germanic', too, is a collective term signifying the older and the modern languages of these peoples and the languages of other Germanic peoples who have vanished from history." | |||
| * ]: "Only '''towards the end of the main phase of the Migrations''' the urban life of the Roman Empire begin to exercise any marked influence on the '''Germanic peoples'''. From that time on they began to acquire a knowledge of foreign cultures, the cultures of the Mediterranean and Christianity, From that time on they ceased to be purely "Germanic" and '''began the long process which has not yet been completed''', of becoming European." | |||
| * ]: "The usual subdivisions are: North-Germanic, comprising the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and Icelanders; West- Germanic, mainly English (Anglo-Saxon), Dutch, and German; East-Germanic, Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians."] | |||
| * ]: "The main divisions of Germanic are: 1. East Germanic, including the Goths, both Ostrogoths and Visigoths. 2. North Germanic, including the Scandinavians, Danes, Icelanders, Swedes, "Norsemen." 3. West Germanic." | |||
| * ]: "The Germanic still include: Englishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, Danes, Swedes, Saxons. Therefore, as Poles, Russians, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians belong to the Slavic ." | |||
| * ]: "ontemporary Europe is made up of three large groups of peoples, divided on the criteria of their origin and linguistic affiliation. They are the following: the Romanic or neo-Latin peoples (Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, French, Romanians, etc.), the Germanic peoples (Germans proper, English, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Icelanders, etc.), and the Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, etc.)." | |||
| * ]: "Dutch quite often refers to German (because of the similarity in sound between Dutch and Deutsch) and sometimes even Scandinavians and other Germanic people." | |||
| * ] (Edited by ]): "The Dutch (in Dutch: Nederlanders) are a Germanic people living in the Netherlands." | |||
| * Jeroen Dewulf (Edited by Jeffrey Cole): "The Flemish (Dutch: Vlamingen), also called Flemings, are a Germanic people living in Belgium." | |||
| * ]: "'''The Teutonic peoples, as they exist at the present day''', are divided into two principal branches: (1) Scandinavian, embracing Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders; and (2) West Germanic, which includes, besides the German-speaking inhabitants of Germany proper (see Germany) and Switzerland (q. v.), also the population of the Netherlands (the Dutch), the Flemings of Belgium, and the descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes in Great Britain, together with their offspring in North America, Australia, and other British colonies— the English- speaking peoples of the world." | |||
| * ]: "People of the Scandinavian group of the Teutonic stock, consisting of the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Icelanders." | |||
| * ]: "The Germanic peoples are the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, Dutch, English and the northern Swiss and Austrians." | |||
| * ]: "The Scandinavians, or the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, Teutonic peoples, are so intimately related..." | |||
| * ]: "The Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes represent the Scandinavian branch of the Teutonic family." | |||
| During the last couple of years, a number of IPs have launched a series of RfCs on this talk page, arguing in favor of purging this article of references to Germanic peoples of the present day. It has later been revealed that the initiator of these RfCs was the sockpuppeteer ]. The ] argument has since been applied with references to Freeboy200's RfCs to remove quality sources on Germanic peoples from this article. No reliable sources have been provided for the ] claim that Germanic peoples have disappeared. As per ], original research is forbidden on Misplaced Pages, with or without consensus. As the claim of disappearance remains unsourced and contradicts a number of quality sources, it should be contested. ] (]) 16:53, 6 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ] - You have again reverted my insertion of ]'s definition of Germanic peoples. Your rationale in confusing: | |||
| * You dismiss a source by Edward Arthur Thompson from 1983 as "outdated" and then insert a source by ] from 1988. | |||
| * You say that Germanic peoples do not exist anymore because ] speaks of Germanic peoples "exclusively in past tense". This is the ]. Besides, the Encyclopedia Britannica Online article ''has no credited author'', and is therefore grossly inferior in reliability to the earlier article credited to Edward Arthur Thompson, who was a prominent scholar on the subject. | |||
| * You cite alternatively page 12 from Wolfram's ''History of the Goths'' (1988) and ''The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples'' (1997) for your claim that "Germanic peoples no longer exist". I have examined page 12 of both books, and they mention nothing of that sort. | |||
| :* | |||
| :* | |||
| As it stands now, the first sentence of the lead is thorough ], not backed by any of the two sources cited. ] (]) 08:40, 7 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| This is all a bit nonsensical, surely? | |||
| *It is insulting and obviously dishonest to imply that opposition to your modern Germanic peoples insertions has come only from a few IPS! | |||
| *Concerning article scope, our sources would not need to constrict what editing decisions we make here. (If there was a big difference anyway, which there is not. They all focus on ancient peoples.) | |||
| *The sentence you pick out of Edward Arthur Thompson from 1983, is (1) a tertiary source, so not a strong source at all for this and (2) clearly twisted completely out of context because the very title of the article where this sentence comes from is "Germans, Ancient". | |||
| *The other sources you have cited previously and now on this talk page are obviously not suitable for all the various reasons which have been discussed many times: too old, tertiary, clearly intended to be mainly about '''languages''' and/or '''ancient peoples''', passing remarks twisted out of context, etc. | |||
| *Obviously when you only have one source cited (Thompson) for the "modern" Germanic peoples, but he only mentions ancient ones, and all good sources also treat them as ancient, as does the rest of our article, then it is obviously sophistic in the extreme to say that people are using an argument from silence. WP policy says the onus is on you, as the proponent of an un-sourced assertion, to find a source which positively and clearly asserts something notable and worth an article. You keep failing to do this. You have created no new consensus. | |||
| * In any case this article is not about modern Germanic peoples so why call only the first sentence OR? I think the reason is clear: you know a separate article for supposedly real modern Germanic peoples (unless it was about language groups) could never pass WP rules, and so you are piggy backing this fringe material into a real article.--] (]) 09:11, 7 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :Replying point by point: | |||
| :* 1- The initiator of the RfCs which have resulted in the "consensus" you're referring to was ]. | |||
| :* 2 - Our editing decisions must always be constricted by sources as per ]. | |||
| :* 3 - ] was a leading expert on Germanic peoples and his article is published by a reliable publisher, ]. He is a ] on the subject. | |||
| :* 4 - The vast majority of the sources presented above have never been discussed on this talk page before. They are both old and new, secondary and tertiary, and attributed to both historians, linguists, anthropologists and geographers. The sources are intended to be about Germanic peoples, which is the topic of this article. | |||
| :* 5 - My additions to the lead are sourced. Yours are not. You're the one making un-sourced assertions and it is rather ''your'' responsibility per WP policy to find a source "positively and clearly" stating that Germanic peoples do not exist anymore. | |||
| :* 6 - Since when did Edward Arthur Thompson, ], ] and the other sources mentioned above become "]"? ] (]) 10:09, 7 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::: Krakkos, this endless crusade of yours has long been tiresome, and you keep trying to weasel your viewpoint into the article without consensus. You say that the Encyclopædia Britannica Online article is not reliable, but as you very well know, it is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., which you inconsistently say ''is'' reliable. Andrew Lancaster has said most of what I would say, but you keep citing Edward Arthur Thompson as if he were the last word on the subject and he is not. Of course you conveniently ignore my edit summary that said, "...even in 1990, most historians writing in German understood that the Germanic peoples no longer exist...". I cited Herwig Wolfram's book because I wanted to show that even thirty years ago, not so long after Edward Arthur Thompson's book was published, that authoritative German-speaking historians understood that the Germanic peoples do not exist in modern times; and I would assert that Wolfram, who writes in German (his book was translated), not English, is a superior source to Thompson. ] (]) 14:34, 7 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::: | |||
| ::::*I never said that the at ] was "not reliable". What i did say is that that article has ''no credible authors''. Its only credited authors are "content analysts" and . The 1983 article in Britannica is credited to ], a renowned scholar on Germanic peoples. His article is therefore more reliable, as per ]. Regardless of its reliability, the Encyclopedia Britannica Online article nevertheless does not state that Germanic peoples no longer exist. | |||
| ::::*I have not ignored your edit summary. I have examined . Wolfram says that Germanic peoples and ] are to be distinguished from each other. That does not equate to the claim that "Germanic peoples no longer exist". | |||
| ::::] (]) 15:45, 7 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::You are again ignoring that the onus is on you to show the existence of a continuing German-ic nationality. Where is any good strong source which clearly says that they ''do'' still exist, clearly saying that they are not a language-speaking group in modern contexts? (The language group also has other articles.) The answer is that there is none. Thompson certainly does not do this, as already pointed out. You are simply twisting a single sentence out of context. His title even says "Ancient". Concerning the first sentence, are you saying there is no such thing as the ''ancient'' Germanic peoples, or what is your point? The article is full of sourcing for ''their'' existence and notability in reliable sources. Surely this is not controversial? None of these sources describe a modern Germanic nation.--] (]) 11:43, 8 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::I have never claimed that there is a "Germanic nationality" or "Germanic nation". Germanic is ''a collective term'' for various tribes/ethnicities/nationalities that have existed from ancient times up to the present day. I have provided ]. You have continued to ignore those sources. In his defintion of Germanic peoples, regardless of the title of his article, ] tells us who the Germanic peoples ''are'' rather than who they ''were''. Per ] and ], Misplaced Pages must base its content on sources, rather than the personal opinions of Misplaced Pages editors such as yourself. ] (]) 12:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::I have to reinforce that I agree with ], at least also that version should be mentioned he presented per weight and ] in case there would not be and entire consensus of the two sides.(] (]) 12:51, 8 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| :::::::::Thompson was writing about "Germans, Ancient". So I still have not seen any reliable source mentioning a real modern version of the Germanic peoples, except in the linguistic sense. However, that there have been 19th/early 20th century ideas and popular beliefs about such things (eg among the Nazis) is touched upon in the article already and is indeed sourceable, though it is not the main topic of THIS article. Keep in mind that even if the concept of a modern Germanic folk becomes something serious scholars refer to positively again, the subject of this Misplaced Pages article is still something else. ''This article is about ancient peoples, who no longer exist.''--] (]) 12:57, 8 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::Agree with all that. ] (]) 13:05, 8 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::We're not discussing how the topic is to the titled, but how it is to be defined. Thompson defines who Germanic peoples ''are'' rather than who they ''were''. Anyways, ], and these are not just from linguists. ] (]) 13:25, 8 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::It ''is'' up to Misplaced Pages editors finally to decide what each article is about, and there is no apparent controversy about the notability of the ancient peoples which this article has always been about. What you are trying to do is add an unsourceable fringe idea... "and they still exist" ...to a solid topic. Your sources don't justify this, just as they would not be sufficient to justify a stand alone article. (We also already have articles for ] and ].) Our sources about the ancient Germanic peoples make it clear that they do not still exist. There is no source saying that a new ethnic group came into being, and there is no modern Germanic culture or ethnos or nation or folk, only the language group, and the new nations which to some extent "descend" (in a complex and mixed way) from classical ones.--] (]) 14:26, 8 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::::Yes, and our decisions as Misplaced Pages editors must be guided by reliable sources, per ] and ]. The ] show that Germanic peoples have existed from ancient times up to the present day. ] (]) 14:46, 8 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::::I and others have explained why these sources do not justify the proposal that any classical Germanic people lived on and continues to exist today. The lists of modern peoples who supposedly belong to a Germanic people are clearly just lists of groups who speak a Germanic language. Serious scholars do not equate ethnicity purely with language.--] (]) 07:02, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::::::It so happens that your source, which you have misrepresented, defines Germanic peoples as "any of the Indo-European speakers of Germanic languages." The sources i have provided are lists of what it defines as Germanic peoples. It's not up you to redefine what they're saying. And they are clearly ''not''' "just lists of groups who speak a Germanic language". ] states that modern Germanic peoples (like modern ]), are characterized by a common "origin ''and'' linguistic affiliation". | |||
| :::::::::::::::The ] ethnos has existed since ]. When did they cease to be Germanic? ] (]) 08:38, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::::::In most cases we don't know the details of the splitting up of the old classical peoples. But split up they did, and the Frisians no longer belong to a single Germanic people, because there is no single Germanic people except in the linguistic sense. Concerning Pop, it seems he is an expert in medieval Roumania, but in any case he is clearly writing in a way we need to be careful of, writing "we could say that". Whatever we should make of this, for example whether it might be relevant for another WP article, I see no way to say that he is talking about a simple continuation of the classical ethnic group. He is playing with ways of splitting up the modern European people. I think we have many other articles on such subjects, and his comments might be relevant for some of them.--] (]) 09:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::::::::Pop is a professor of medieval history and certainly a more reliable source than you. His source was introduced to support the fact that Germanic peoples share not only common languages, but also a common origin. The fact that there is a continuation of Germanic peoples from ancient times up to today is shown by the soures from ], ] & ], ], ] and ]. This article is ''not'' about "a single Germanic people". It's about Germanic people'''s'''. Frisians are classified as Germanic in a number of sources. Where are your sources for the claim that Frisians are no longer Germanic? ] (]) 09:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::::::::You are continually pretending you do not understand the real problem. You can't give any clear relevant source for saying there is any entity ''at all'' today called the "Germanic Peoples", except in specific senses covered by other articles in Misplaced Pages. This article here is about peoples in the classical period, and it was not a linguistically defined group. They were seen as one great single cultural entity containing many smaller nations. This perception of a single entity did not survive the middle ages, when peoples were divided up in different ways.--] (]) 10:02, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::::::::::For the nth time, the relevant sources are given ]. Your own source defines Germanic peoples primarily as a linguistically defined group. This article is not only about peoples of the classical period. It contains lots of information from the middle ages as well, when there was no conception of a Germanic "single entity". This article is not simply about the "Germani" (i. e. inhabitants of ]) identified in Roman sources, but about the Germanic peoples of English-language sources. This is what you fail to understand. ] (]) 10:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| {{od}}Firstly, it is misleading and distracting to refer to "my" source, as I did not mention that source and indeed there is no controversy here anyway about the existence of the classical Germanic peoples as a subject worth an article. Secondly, the topic this article covers has been discussed many times and there is a pretty clear long-term consensus. You know very well that you are in a minority, and other active editors do not agree with your reading of the literature, nor about what this article should cover. This article is indeed about the Germani in Germania, though it touches related issues as well of course, such as Germanic languages and Pan-Germanicism, which have their own main articles. Attempts to add Afrikaners etc have always been controversial and stuck out like a proverbial sore thumb! FWIW both those articles (and others) discuss modern categories which do partly derive from accounts of the classical Germani.--] (]) 11:31, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :I refer to is as "your" source because it is the source referred to for your claim that Germanic peoples are defined as the Germani of Roman-authors. This article contains plenty of information about ] Scandinavians and their culture, and they are not considered part of the "Germani". The intro as it currently stands is thus not only a ], but fails ] by a wide margin. ] (]) 12:03, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::Andrew Lancaster, in your previous comment you considered "you" in single or plural from? Thank You(] (]) 12:10, 9 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| ::I am certainly open to proposals for pruning the article and making sure it has a clear focus. That has been a long-run concern on this article. Scandinavians are not outside all classical concepts of Germania though, and what's more the post Roman Scandivians are sometimes used to help study earlier cultures because they are thought to have preserved certain myths etc. Perhaps this should be discussed in a new section.--] (]) 15:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::We already have an article covering the "classical concept of Germania". That article is titled ]. We should not transform this article into a duplicate of the former. ] (]) 15:44, 9 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Nobody is suggesting that. --] (]) 07:29, 10 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| *Just noting that there have only been two RfCs on this topic (that I can find in the archives at least), and both were initiated by Freeboy200 in 2018. That account is a sockpuppet of Ukrainetz1, which was blocked in 2017, so all of the account's edits were block evasion. Giving weight to those RfCs is rewarding the violation of policy on sockpuppetry. ] (]) 02:52, 10 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::More importantly, there is a good long run consensus among active editors that this article should continue to focus upon classical peoples. It gains nothing by having asides patched into it about Afrikaners and the rest. In general this is a topic which attracts OR, and the use of poor sources, not only Pan-Germanicism but also other topics, side discussions, speculations, 19th century theories.--] (]) 07:29, 10 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| The way I see it, this covers what we need:- | |||
| *In most of the sources being mentioned to justify the concept of modern Germanic peoples, it is clear that the term is being used in the sense of "speakers of Germanic languages", which of course is not an ethnic group anymore, just as there is no Indo-European ethnic group, because the languages have long ceased being mutually comprehensible or part of a single dialect continuum. The language family has it's own articles. --] (]) 09:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| *The idea that language families represent races or biological populations is of course no longer accepted in any simple way by serious scholars and needs to be discussed in articles about the science and about the history of race theories.--] (]) 09:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| *If the aim was to have an article which encompassed all successors (defined vaguely) of the classical Germanic peoples, then why are we not discussing Baltic and Slavic speaking populations. The answer is of course that the area was changed a lot in late antiquity. This is why ''this'' article can and should discuss what happened to the original Germanic peoples and what effects they had into post classical times. Various sub-regions are handled in other articles also already.--] (]) 09:05, 11 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::''The idea that language families represent races or biological populations'' -> As I recall, none of us argued like that.(] (]) 09:28, 11 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| :::Arguably nothing has been argued very clearly by the proponents of the "Modern Germanic Peoples". But the way I see it, the critical area of disagreement, at least between Krakkos and several others including me, is that the classical Germanic peoples have a known modern continuation (singular) in some way which goes beyond language (although the lists proposed of modern peoples are always lists based on language). Krakkos calls it common "origins". If biological/genetic continuity is not "origins" then what are they? In all these proposals I have seen, Krakkos and others are keen to say it is not only about language, thus eliminating Indians and Nigerians for example. What's more, they consistently indicate that an Afrikaner is more "Germanic" than a Pole, Sorb or Czech. Right? And I am saying this is pseudo-science and folk wisdom, whereas the real biological ancestry of human populations needs careful articles drawing upon the latest real science. But if you can define another type of "Germanic Peoples" that I have not mentioned please do so, and then with all cards on the table we can discuss how/whether to handle on Misplaced Pages.--] (]) 11:39, 11 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::''whereas the real biological ancestry of human populations needs careful articles drawing upon the latest real science'' -> this we agree however just because you argue as per admixture just a part of Germanic element would be present on Germanic speaking folks, it may not be interpreted in an exclusive way, since so-called pure Germans, Hungarians, Slavs etc. have also experienced heavy admixture in the past millenia, we could even hardly speaking this context pure specimens/people/nations, IMHO. Beyond the scholarly and genetic (?) argumentation of this debate, Germanic people should be considered who share a common ethno-linguistic Germanic ancestry, with XOR conjuction at first glance, isn't it?(] (]) 13:27, 11 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| :::::Hard to be sure I follow, but I think you are somehow arguing that this supposed modern Germanic people can be defined by descent. I do not think this is a definition we can find in the specialist works. This makes sense too, because I also do not think this is a clear, logical, or useful definition. The only solid part of it is the linguistic part of it, but that is for a different article. The real modern diverse Germanic-speaking peoples are united by language, not ethnicity or descent.--] (]) 13:55, 11 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::In case you don't undrstand anything I phrased, feel free to ask to specify. More shortly, now apart from anything else, I wanted to say we may hardly deny that there are some Germanic groups based on not just langauge affiliation, but common ancestry, shall it be in some cases distant and wanted to say in case both the linguistic and ethnic origin would hold, then we could by any means discuss about Germanic people beyond ancient Germanic groups, that shared as well these two qualifiers.(] (]) 19:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| :::::::But good sources don't support this, and we can deny it. In recent decades the understanding of scholars about "common ancestry" in European populations has completely changed, and this started before the DNA revolution. That situation has not settled down into any clear consensus which can tell us how to even identify what Germanic ancestry would look like. Only fringe scientists and amateurs enthusiasts on the internet claim to be able to identify Germanic genes. All the older cultures of classical times recombined, and also clearly had older connections. So you can't just assume that any European population who speaks a Germanic language must descend from Germanic peoples of classical times more than other populations. Similarly, the connection between Germanic languages and classical Germanic peoples is no longer assumed to be so clear, even though they share the old name due to 19th century scholarly categories. Classical authors clearly included speakers of several language families in the same large ethnic category, and people making these sorts of proposals always conveniently ignore this.--] (]) 10:14, 12 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::''So you can't just assume that any European population who speaks a Germanic language must descend from Germanic peoples of classical times more than other populations.'' -> it may be true at a certain degree, however given some special collateral conditons at the same time with other relevant degrees, especially regarding i.e. the admixture of the Scandinavian people that has been much less then especially on other regions of Europe. However, I understood your points cleary.(] (]) 10:40, 12 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| ::::::::], as you mentioned earlier, ] and ] also speak ]. ], ] and ] are even native speakers of Germanic languages. However, the sources above do not classify these as Germanic peoples. Therefore, your argument that the sources are simply referring to peoples speaking Germanic languages is flawed. If the sources intended to refer to peoples speaking Germanic languages they would be referring to ''Germanic-speaking peoples''. ] (]) 20:40, 15 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::Well yes we have discussed it, and you know the problems most of us see with this position you keep taking. The sources you refer to are either simply listing Germanic languages and their original speakers, or else implying an old-style racial theory. Both approaches are subjects for other articles, and/or covered under the "Later Germanic studies and their influence" section of this article already. Furthermore most of the sources you've found are individual sentences only, which need to be ripped out of context, whereas ''you want to promote a full blown theory of ethnic continuity from classical to modern times''. You have no source which contain any extended proposal or discussion about such a theory. We have seen scholars sources pointing explicitly to the medieval ''dis''continuities.--] (]) 07:15, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::The original speakers of Germanic languages so happens to be the topic of this article. The sources used are recent. These are not "old-style racial theories". If the sources were simply "individual sentences" that had been "ripped out of context" you would have provided examples of this by now. Here is a citation from ], Vice President of the ], showing the continuity of Germanic peoples from ancient times up to the present: | |||
| ::::::::::*"'''During Roman times. Germanic peoples arrived from the east''' conquering whatever Celtic lands the Romans had not taken, namely the areas just north of the Danube and east of the Rhine. These tribes continually threatened the Roman Empire, sacking Rome itself for the first time in a.d. 410. By the end of the 400s. Gaul was taken over by the Franks, eventually to be renamed for them (France). The Burgundians lent their name to a province (Burgundy) that was eventually absorbed into France. The Visigoths and Lombards moved into the Italian peninsula. The latter name is found in the modern Italian provincial name of Lombardy. The Angles and Saxons moved into the British Isles, pushing the Celtic peoples farther into the fringes of Europe. Even today, the English are considered Anglo-Saxons. Other Germanic tribes moved north into Scandinavia. By the a.d. 800s, they developed a distinct Viking culture... '''Germanic culture is still prevalent today'''. Though the Franks, Burgundians. and Lombards adopted the Romance languages of the Roman provinces they conquered, other Germanic peoples, like the Vikings, maintained their Germanic languages through the centuries and are clearly seen on the map today (see Figure 3.4a). '''Germans. Austrians, Dutch, and the Scandinavians (such as Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes) are the most numerous of today's Germanic peoples'''. The Germanic peoples also converted to Christianity and later became the driving force behind the creation of the branch of Christianity known as Protestantism." | |||
| :::::::::: ] (]) 08:49, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| {{od}} A good example of a sentence ripped out of context, from a tertiary source not specialized in this subject and offering no sourcing or argumentation for what seem to be simple mistakes, not novel proposals. (This author thinks the Germanic peoples came from eastern Europe to Scandinavia for example.) Do you actually own copies of all these google books which you post snippets of? Showing a snippet-only quotation is not really a good way to prove you are not taking isolated sentences from google searches that suit your aims is it? In any case, in this case the snippet shows enough to show that the author is speaking of the classical Germanic peoples. Whether he knows it or not, the classical Germanic peoples are an ethnic designation for which we rely almost entirely upon classical authors, and we know for sure that for them this grouping was not based on language. We all know we should avoid tertiary sources in situations like this, and luckily we are able to because the editors of this article have long been looking at more specialized secondary sources. ''This has been discussed over and over.''--] (]) 14:36, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :Agree with all this. Readers may be interested that Krakkos is preparing for another campaign, on the usual lines, at ]. He should be resisted. ] (]) 14:44, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :The source is a summary by ] of the history of the Germanic peoples from ancient times until the present day. As Vice President of the ] he is certainly a reliable scholar. These are many sentences, and they are not "ripped out of context". Per ], tertiary are useful in cases where ] is to be evaluated. This is one such case. Bradshaw says that the Germanic peoples lived east of the Celts. He does not say that "Germanic peoples came from eastern Europe to Scandinavia". Please stop misrepresenting the sources. ] (]) 17:55, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::For the record: I don't see anything certain about that qualification, at least for this topic. Also note once again my comments about the type of source this is (low quality tertiary) and the way that you use snippets to find sentences. Although I can only see snippets I note above that you quote(?) "Germanic tribes moved north into Scandinavia", so unless I misunderstand you, I am not misrepresenting the source, who clearly sees the Germanic people as having originated in continental eastern Europe. So: Clearly a low quality source, and clearly being used in an opportunistic way.--] (]) 09:22, 17 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::The source is attributed to ], a distinguished scholar, and published by ], a prominent publisher. It is therefore a reliable source per ]. ] states that tertiary sources are helpful when evaluating ]. This discussion is about how much weight this article should give to modern Germanic peoples. | |||
| :::Bradshaw is correct that the Germanic peoples at some point migrated into Scandinavia. The ] of a Scandinavian origin of Germanic peoples and other Indo-European peoples has been discredited long ago. Regardless, we're not discussing the origin of Germanic peoples in Scandiavia, but whether there is a continuity between Germanic peoples of ancient times and modern times. The fact you're resorting to ]s and the ], rather than sources, proves the weakness of your position. ] (]) 10:21, 17 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::But you are not using good relevant tertiary sources, and you are leaving completely on them to supply an excuse for material not discussed in ANY good secondary sources.--] (]) 12:50, 17 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::And you're not using any sources at all. ] are good and plenty of them are secondary. ] (]) 12:57, 17 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Makes sense. I am not making a proposal. You are. ]--] (]) 19:19, 17 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::In April 2019, you made the radical change of changing this article from being about who the Germanic peoples ''are'' to who the Germanic peoples ''were''. This change contained no justification in its edit summary and it was inserted without providing any sources. In fact, what you did was just inserting your own personal views and then attributing it to . There is an even bigger burden on you, and so far you've failed to live up to it. ] (]) 20:11, 17 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::This article has always been an article about a classical ethnic category, as far as I remember. That is the only sourceable and uncontroversial topic, and in fact you have also consistently insisted that you want to write about modern Germanic peoples (who you can't find good sources for) as a continuation of the classical peoples (a completely uncontroversial topic). So not even you have ever really wanted to make this an article about a people who "are". Every now and then people have patched little badly sourced remarks about Afrikaners and Luxemburgers, and over many years as you know very well these have been controversial and removed.--] (]) 10:31, 18 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::: Replying point by point: | |||
| ::::::::* Large sections of this article have always been about post-classical peoples, such as the medieval ]. | |||
| ::::::::* The continuation of Germanic peoples is sourceable to several quality sources. These are provided ]. | |||
| ::::::::* If the idea of continuation of Germanic peoples from classical times up until modern times had been a controversial, you would have been able to provide sources testifying to such controversiality. | |||
| ::::::::* Even if an idea is controversial, it is not the policy of Misplaced Pages to censor information. | |||
| :::::::: ] (]) 17:31, 18 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::But the remarkable inadequacy of your sources have been pointed out to you over and over. And the medieval legacy is indeed discussed in the article as it should be, as indeed is the more controversial idea of a modern "continuation". In the end you know that the topic/focus/foundation of the article, which both of these can only add to, is the classical category - even in your preferred approach. Your whole "continuation" position would make even less sense if you would start to say that the classical Germanic people are not the base of this article! (Continuation of what?) Also please think about ].--] (]) 07:20, 19 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::You're not in a position to complain about the inadequacy of sources when you have yet to provide a single source yourself. You have your own ] to provide sources that back up your claim of Germanic extinction. ] (]) 08:27, 19 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::I am not proposing to add any remarks to the article about "extinction" either. The truth, as discussed in the article, is a bit more complicated. Are you honestly going to try to make the old trick argument that people have to find sources mentioning the non-existence of a non-thing? This used to be quite a popular game on Misplaced Pages in the early days, but I honestly don't think it works anymore. You know that not only myself, but other active editors, are not going to be tricked this easily?--] (]) 10:48, 19 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::::You have earlier stated here that you consider Germanic peoples extinct. With the phraseology introduced by you in this article, Germanic peoples are referred to similarly to genuinely extinct peoples such as ], ], ] and ]. If an editor provides reliable sources mentioning the existence of a thing, and you still consider this a "non-existent non-thing", the ] is on YOU to provide a source backing this up. So far you have failed to live up to this burden. ] (]) 18:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::::According to the sources we have the "extinction", or at least the fading away and splitting up, happened in a complex way. But that is just me reading the situation here on a talk page, and obviously other editors agree with me. OTOH It is the wording on the article itself which content policies apply to, and so there is no point arguing about the sourcing of word choices on a talk page. I am not arguing that we use the word extinction in the article, even though it is clear the sources we have talk about a classical people and describe no simple continuity, despite there being a "legacy".--] (]) 09:20, 20 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| {{od}} Was that April 2019 edit discussed on the talk page? If not, the least to be expected for such a fundamental change would be an edit summary. Looking through the article history, 'are' was stable for over five years. ] (]) 02:37, 23 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :So you are saying the change of one word which was fundamentally in conflict with the whole article was a fundamental change to the article? This seems to be clutching at straws. Of course there were many such little badly sourced (or unsourced) insertions being made and not always picked up, for example the mentions of Afrikaners and Luxemburgers. But the content of the article, and all of the properly verifiable parts, have consistently been about a historical subject. The supposed continuation of this historical grouping of people has continually been a source of controversy, and has consistently been shown to be badly sourced. I would compare it to the way climate change deniers or creationists also consistently attempt to slip bits into our articles on climate change and evolution.--] (]) 06:46, 23 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :: Changing the tense in the first line fundamentally alters the article, and the wording was stable for 5+ years. Did you forget to leave an edit summary or was it an intentionally unexplained edit? ] (]) 02:32, 24 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::: I would say it is blindingly obvious that one word was itself in conflict with the whole long article, and no one noticed it for a long time.--] (]) 06:07, 24 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::: ] - His April 2019 edits were made without any edit summary, and in the middle of ] (initiated by ], a sock of ]). No justification was made at the talk for these drastic changes, which entirely changed the scope of the article, and both ] and myself expressed opposition to it. It must also be noted that Andrew's edit is in violation of the source used. He defines Germanic peoples as "a group of northern European tribes in Roman times", while the used defines Germanic peoples as "Indo-European speakers of Germanic languages". The word "are" only became "in conflict with the whole long article" later, after Andrew, again without any justification, removed a large amount of sources from scholars such as ], ] and ] and replaced with yet more original research. These April 2019 changes are going to be undone sooner or later. ] (]) 16:56, 25 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::There has been a LOT of talk page discussion too, remember? Just as an example of how obvious it is that you know that, see recent post by you, admitting that what you want in this article has no consensus, and that previous attempts by you to try to make a new article have resulted in speedy deletion. Will you please stop flogging a dead horse?--] (]) 19:56, 25 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| Note to editors of this article: See ]. I have posted on the talk page.--] (]) 20:29, 23 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| == New York == | |||
| {{edit semi-protected|Germanic peoples|answered=yes}} | |||
| please change ((New York)) to ((New York City|New York)) | |||
| :] '''Not done:'''<!-- Template:ESp --> There is no link to ] in the article that I can see. All mentions of New York are in notes and references, where links are not usually used. ] (]) 18:59, 10 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| == Map == | |||
| ], | |||
| we may agree in WP there are in an overwhelming amount inaccurate maps, pointing to those mistakes you suggest, if i'd remove all affected, a very little number would remain (especially not regarding the antiquity where things are blurry, but on those topic where nothing should be blurry - i.e. WWI & WWII). | |||
| However, recently we try to correct maps (= if user made, update them), etc. I noticed you replaced to another one, considering now you expressed you have as well another concern (too much extent to Germanic tribes), while the map you added shows a much-much less extent, thus we may conclude the two maps represented a kind of ''extrema''. | |||
| ] | |||
| Thus you should gain a consensus by any means how to solve this, which map would be good to depict the extent of Germanic tribes on tha timeline appropriately. Opinion of others?(] (]) 09:00, 14 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| :Why I have issue with the 58 BC map — it splits Veneti and Slavs, who were not two separate groups at the time, this has been confirmed by Byzantine historian Jordanes, "although they derive from one nation, now they are known under three names, the Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni (''Slav'')" so the split came during the late-migration period of the 6th century AD. Also, strangely the eastern border of Germania looks a lot like the modern post WWII border of Poland, and not at all accurate in relation to other maps showing the distribution of Germanic tribes. --] (]) 09:29, 14 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ] | |||
| :*Also, Holy Roman Empire map in the ''Post-migration ethnogeneses'' section — shows a map of the Empire when it was a multi-ethnic entity based on political/religious realities, at least let's show a map of the Holy Roman Empire when it was called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, or better yet, a map of modern ethnic-Germanic nations which includes Scandinavia. (BTW, Prussia was never part of the Holy Roman Empire). So, given the sensitivities around this issue, can we use accurate maps for this article? --] (]) 09:29, 14 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :*] and ] also just to address one of your points ''"if i'd remove all affected, a very little number would remain"'' — What is up with this obsession about maps in the Germanic Peoples article and the Holy Roman Empire article... look, you don't need a map for every section, especially if the map has issues (the 58 BC map was added rather recently, so it's not longstanding). I keep coming up on this in all sorts of German related articles, maps everywhere and even as you pointed out some are not correct. So, it won't be an issue to remove the less accurate versions. --] (]) 12:18, 14 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::This article is about Germanic peoples. Possible inaccuracies regarding Veneti and Slavs are of minor importance to a map used here. The 58 BC map nicely shows the distribution of the various peoples in Europe at the dawn of the ], a watershed moment in European and Germanic history. The distribution of Germanic tribes in what is today Poland is similar to that of other commonly used Misplaced Pages maps. | |||
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| :::It does not seem like the purpose of the 58 BC map is to "split" Veneti and Slavs, but rather to point out that there were additional unnamed peoples living beyond the ] mentioned in classical sources, who were probably Slavs. The map does something similar with the ] and ]. The Spanish-language map you added illustrates the expansions, rather than distribution of Germanic tribes. The map also contains certain grave errors. For example, the ] lived close to the ] in 1 AD, far to the east of the ]. The relevance of the ] to Germanic peoples is demonstrated in our sources and reflected in the article. There appears to be a current consensus on this article that modern Germanic peoples do not exist, and that such information is beyond the scope of this article. A map of the distribution of Germanic languages in modern Europe would therefore be beyond the scope of this article, unless this consensus is overturned. ] (]) 12:33, 14 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::], I still don't understand what is the point of the Holy Roman Empire map in the ''Post-migration ethnogeneses'' section, the text does not even make mention of the Empire, why is it there?? As for the 1st century BC map, if there is no good version, we should just omit it, instead of showing a confused map. --] (]) 15:58, 14 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::], | |||
| == What is 'Northern Europe'? == | |||
| :::::Regarding your first answer, you desribed the same in the edit logs and as well more detailed about your other concern, that I expected. As I see Krakkos answered both of them (along with your HRE concern). | |||
| :::::On the further, I don't have any "obsession", btw. I did not remove any map you added to the article. If you gain consensus for removal of any inaccurate map of really cogent reasons, I will not object it. However, I prefer to update/correct them, in some not simply evident cases it might need as well consensus. I have to admit I achieved 1 update only yet by the help of a fellow editor who we ask to correct maps usually (it was a Hungary map), as mainly majority of editors dealing with texts, but slowly maybe more could be achieved.(] (]) 18:13, 14 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| Hi, pro-Scandinavian lurker here :) Sometimes it seems as if Europe = the Continent between the Baltic and the Mediterranean, divided by Pyrenees, Alps and Balkans into North and South, leaving Scandinavia as, one might suspect, a nearly non-European afterthought up there. Being from up here, we do consider ourselves European and also as constituting "Northern Europe", where Belgium, Germany, Poland etc. are "Middle Europe'. | |||
| Scholars do not see Jordanes as a very reliable source, and please note that earlier and more contemporary sources describes the Veneti as Germanic and even Suevian. However, and please note this, that does not mean that they were not Slavic. This article is about classical Germanic peoples, and according to classical descriptions the Slavs and Balts were natives of Germania.--] (]) 16:59, 15 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| That, at least according to the maps, which barely extend to all of Jutland, also makes us non-Germanic. If the 'Germanic' in "Germanic peoples' is based on Roman history, or even later German history, ok; but if it is based on e.g. language, and possibly on archaeology, shoudn't Scandiavia be included a bit more? Or, as a minimum, if editors feel such a subject is best presented in separate articles, perhaps include links to these articles? T ] (]) 03:05, 8 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :], your view is very POV-ish (why is Jordanes unreliable, and who says that?). That's not how Misplaced Pages works — if you disagree on an issue then you ignore the source as "unreliable". If you read Tacitus' account form AD 98 he clearly states ''"Here Suebia ends. I do not know whether to class the tribes of the Peucini (''Bastarnae''), Venedi, and Fenni with the Germans or with the Sarmatians... Nevertheless, they are to be classed as Germani, for they have settled houses, carry shields and are fond of travelling fast on foot; in all these respects they differ from the Sarmatians, who live in wagons or on horseback."'' So, he classed Veneti as Germanic based on their way of life, but clearly noticed that they were not like the other Germanic tribes or the Sarmatians. Then you move a few centuries to Jordanes (who was a Byzantine historian of Gothic extraction, no less) and his account in 551 AD which states ''"although they derive from one nation, now they are known under three names, the Veneti, Antes and Sclaveni (''Slavs'')"''. So, I don't agree with your off-the-cuff remark that Jordanes is not reliable, it's very irresponsible. --] (]) 05:20, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :Which maps or wordings are you talking about?--] (]) 04:18, 8 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :*], the 58 BC map is debatable, but again why do we have a map of the Holy Roman Empire in the Post-migration ethnogeneses section when the Holy Roman Empire is not even mentioned in the section's text, at least I tried to suggest a connection to modern languages with a map because that's something that's referenced in the text, but the Holy Roman Empire is not. --] (]) 05:35, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::Hi, all maps but one in this article, for instance. The article is focused on the 'Roman' perspective, though, making the choice of maps adequate for the purpose; bit of an air punch for me there. But my criticism is tied to other ways of being Germanic, see above. I am assuming that there are articles covering this, it's just not apparent from this article. T ] (]) 21:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::], as I see it is mentioned in the text, the eight pharagraph is a complete sentence of it.(] (]) 19:44, 16 September 2019 (UTC)) | |||
| :::It's difficult to discuss Scandinavia during this time because we have almost no contemporary sources (outside archaeology) that discuss it, and hence scholars don't discuss it in much detail when discussing the ''Germani''. That being the case, I don't think there's much that can be added about it - but it finds continual mention in other sections of the article if you just look at those covering culture etc.--] (]) 21:45, 9 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::@] I am genuinely surprised at the accusation. Basically any scholarly publication mentions that Jordanes is a source we have to be careful with concerning his presentation of ethnic histories. You've seriously never read anything like that? Concerning the way WP works, perhaps the issue here might be that you are not using secondary sources, but trying to use only Jordanes, as a primary source? However this is clearly the type of source where WP editors normally expect recent secondary sources to be used as well.--] (]) 07:07, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::In fact, we obviously have too few sources to clarify this problem. I remember a lecture by Reinhard Wenskus at Göttingen University, who was asked about a northern border of the ‘Germani’. He just replied that this border would not have run north of the Jutlandic Thy as Old Norse ''þjóð'' or ‘thioth’ for ‘people’. So, most tentatively, he apparently associated ‘thioth - deutsch - German’. However, apart from missing reliable sources and research, this oral opinion is not suitable for improving the article. ] (]) 14:22, 10 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::I agree with you that you can never be 100% sure on ancient sources (especially that in the case of the Romans for practical reasons they we're not too concerned with peoples further east and wrote a limited amount about them, but modern scholars generally and for some time now agree that who the Romans called the Veneti were in fact the early proto-Slavs/Balts (not going too deep into the subsequest ethnogeneses and mixing). Though, for practical reasons the Romans lumped them with Germanic peoples based on their way of life, though recognizing that they were different. Later, when those people came in direct contact with the Roman world their identity was made more clear. --] (]) 08:25, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::I think this discussion won't go very far unless there is a more concrete proposal because I don't think anyone has consciously been avoiding Scandinavia. I know from maps I have made that I've felt the sourcing justifications are very weak for going beyond the southern parts of Scandinavia which Tacitus and others clearly something about. So I typically try to include something of Scandinavia but find myself asking if we really have any justification for pushing maps up into Norway or northern Sweden. If challenged, no I don't. There is also a second problem which is practical. While making a map about historical events mainly in mainland Europe, you realize that Scandinavia is large, and so including it all leads to a map of "Scandinavia and friends" which I once again don't think fits the bill very well.--] (]) 18:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::In the classical period, the Romans and Greeks did not make many comments about differences in language at all. Hundreds of years later things were different, but by that time no one was speaking of the Germanic peoples as a single entity any more. Only in recent times is Germanic re-defined as a language family.--] (]) 14:24, 16 September 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::I am also a lurker to this page and I would like to add my two cents. | |||
| ::::::I have not seen any anti-Scandinavian posting on this page, as in nobody denies that the people in Scandinavia spoke a Germanic language in antiquity. For this reason I find it odd that there seems to be a faction that would like to ignore evidence supporting a Jastorf/German origin in favor of a Nordic origin who call themselves pro-Scandinavian. This seems largely to be due to a confirmation bias rather than any basis in factual evidence. | |||
| ::::::However, the main point of contention is when newer evidence, along with ancient sources seem to show that Germanic people probably originated in Germany rather than in Scandinavia. This idea of an origin in Germany was out of vogue after WW2 due to obvious political reasons, but I feel that enough time has passed where archeology has progressed to the point that this type of archeology is no longer taboo. | |||
| ::::::As such, this seems to bother people, presumably from Scandinavia, who were largely told that Germanic peoples, language, and culture originated there. | |||
| ::::::My own general thought is this: if evidence shows that Germanic peoples/culture originated in the Jastorf culture of central or northern Germany(rather than the Nordic bronze age culture of Scandinavia), then this is what should be reflected on the page. The fact that this also corroborates what ancient Roman sources seem to state should not be a negative(as is often implied from "pro-Scandinavian" accounts), but rather just another tool in understanding the Germanic peoples, using both ancient sources as well as linguistics and archeological evidence. One should not be "pro-Scandinavian" or "pro-German", but rather follow the evidence where it leads to avoid a confirmation bias. ] (]) 22:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| == Doubtful category == | |||
| == Not an ethnolinguistic group == | |||
| According to ], this is not a valid cultural category, meely a hodgepodge. ] (]) 12:27, 17 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| The opening sentence states: | |||
| :I'd rather stick to ]; and Liebeschütz, Wolfram, Heather, Halsall, Pohl, Goffart... for all their disputes, they are the subject-matter experts. –] (]) 12:44, 17 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| *"The Germanic peoples were an '''ethnolinguistic group''' of Northern European origin..." (emphasis added) | |||
| ::worth noting that discussion of disputes about the existence of “Germanic peoples” are already in the article and lead as well.—] (]) 12:56, 17 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| This is incorrect. The page title "Germanic '''peoples'''" refers to a plurality of ethnic groups/tribes, while the term "]" in correct usage denotes a single ethnic group which is defined – among other things – by a common language. There is to my knowledge no primary or secondary source which states that the ethnic groups (or tribes, confederations etc.) collectively called "Germani" by the Romans spoke a single language. To the contrary: we can safely assume that at the time of the ], and most probably several centuries earlier, Proto-Germanic had already diversified into distinct languages (which is also correctly reflected in the closing statement of the first paragraph in the lead). | |||
| :I do not think a member of the communist youth(according to this wiki page) is typically going to be unbiased on such topics as this, due to the political biases that formed against this after the second world war. ] (]) 14:41, 17 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::Academic bias is not necessarily a problem, because no source is completely unbiased, but a lack of expertise or notability looks like a problem. As mentioned above, part of the issue is that the point is not even especially novel. We are already citing experts in this topic who more or less argue the same point. At first sight this sounds like an interdisciplinary side remark. Our article is citing notable experts from the directly relevant fields.--] (]) 18:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :What are his arguements? ] (]) 01:44, 19 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::We should only discuss his arguments here if they are notable, expert, and ideally different from opinions the article already represents. Remember this is not a discussion forum. So the question is whether anyone has a concrete edit proposal, or is likely to be able to develop one from such a source.--] (]) 18:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| == Germani are Germans in English??? == | |||
| Consequently, the designation of the Germanic peoples as an "ethnolinguistic group" is wrong. Anticipating potential objections: in ], ], ] we find similar opening statements, but in all those cases, the term "ethnolinguistic group" is equally misapplied. WP should stick to a correct usage of terminology. | |||
| A cn tag has been added to our opening sentences, on these words {{tq|Another term, ancient Germans, is considered problematic by many scholars since it suggests identity with present-day Germans}}. Many sources have been discussed for such statements on this talk page in past versions of the article, but when I went to confirm that this is covered in the body I notice that we now have this surprising statement: {{tq|The direct equivalents in English are, however, Germans for Germani and Germany for Germania}}. This is being sourced from the last paragraph of a preface to a work that is only being used to back this one sentence up: Winkler, Martin M. (2016). ''Arminius the Liberator : myth and ideology''. Oxford University Press. It is on Google books . He does not use the term "direct equivalents" but he does say that Germanen and Germania are called Germans and Germany in English, noting that this usage breaks down a distinction which is clear in German. He says he will use "ancient Germans", and explains, the blurring is not such a bad thing for his book, which is about 20th-century mythmaking, because such blurring is part of the story he is telling about ideologies and nationalism. I think that although the sentence we have is not literally wrong it distorts what both this work and more specialist works emphasize, which is that academics are uncomfortable with the lack of common distinct terms in everyday English, and tend to use other terms. I will try to tweak the wording, but I am a little uncomfortable that we are using sources about other topics like this, when we have so many possibilities to use sources that are about the exact topic of our article. It looks like cherry picking? ] (]) 07:25, 18 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| I propose to change the opening sentence to: | |||
| *"The Germanic peoples were a collection of ethnic groups of Northern European origin..." | |||
| Since this page is subject to heated debates, I refrain from doing a bold edit, and seek consensus for this small but necessary correction. –] (]) 10:03, 14 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::Nobody has ever asserted that ethnolinguistic group means a single language or that any source claimed as much. In this case, as with others who speak Slavic languages for instance, they (Germanic peoples) spoke an ''Ursprache'' with some recognizable linguistic commonalities in their language. Why you want to make "ethnolinguistic" into some monolithic singular language is beyond me. Have you read the article in its entirety, as there is plenty in here on linguistics?--] (]) 17:36, 14 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::{{re|Obenritter}} You state that "''nobody'' has ''ever'' asserted that ethnolinguistic group means a single language or that ''any source'' claimed as much (empahsis added)." Well, I am just humbly citing a textbook definition, which is also used in the article ], with plenty of sources for this "monolithic" definition. In turn: can you provide a source which ''defines'' an ethnolinguistic group as a collection of more than one ethnic group, bound together by linguistic affiliation beyond the level of a single language? I am aware that the term is at times employed "popularly" in such a wider sense, including in a few WP articles. There is certainly also a handful of sources which ''employ'' the term in that wider sense, but this doesn't mean that such usage is correct. I am trained in linguistics, specialized in comparative historical linguistics, but also spent two years collecting data as a field linguist, so I am quite confident about what I am discussing here. "Group" in "ethnolinguistic group" means group of individuals (just like in "ethnic group"), which is common usage in sociology, ethnology, sociolinguistics (and that's where the term originates from). It does not mean group of ethnicities etc. however tempting it is to read it that way. | |||
| :::The speakers of Proto-Germanic (pre-diversification) may have fulfilled the criteria for an ethnolinguistic group in the proper sense, the collective of the historical Germanic tribes, however, do not. –] (]) 05:23, 15 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :I’m not sure that I understand the problem with Winkler? Also, we have Green and Kulikowski in the next sentence discussing something similar.—-] (]) 13:43, 18 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| :::::"the collective of the historical Germanic tribes, however, do not" < Tell that to some of the foremost authorities within academia regarding the Germanic people, among them Walter Pohl, Herwig Wolfram, Peter Heather, Guy Halsall, Thomas Burns, Patrick Geary, and Walter Goffart just to name a few. They categorize the Germanic peoples along ethnolinguistic lines throughout their works. So if your argument holds (by the way, I am not some novice scholar myself--a historian by education), then what classifies ethnolinguistic precisely? It cannot be a single language, but a related language. If your line of reasoning were true then Slavic people (with their mutually intelligible dialects) are not related to one another through both ethnicity and language. Absurd and patently false.--] (]) 14:59, 15 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::I also removed the cn tag. I’m not sure why even veteran editors feel this need to go around adding tags to the leads of articles when they clearly haven’t bothered looking at the body.—-] (]) 13:46, 18 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::{{re|Obenritter}} "They categorize the Germanic peoples along ethnolinguistic lines throughout their works." This is wishy-washy and misses the point. You avoid the actual question: Does any of the scholars you mention employ the technical term "ethnolinguistic group" (NB: not just the adjective "ethnolinguistic" plus whatever noun!) when talking about the Germanic people? This is about proper terminology, nothing more, nothing less. I do not dispute in any way the validity of the entity of the "Germanic peoples", but the sloppy use of a technical term with a rigidly defined scope. (Btw, have you actually bothered to look up the definition of "]" as it is employed in sociolinguistics and ethnography since the 1980s?) –] (]) 15:51, 15 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::Having fixed the text my only concern about Winkler is just that we don't seem to need that specific source, for that specific information. Like you say, we also have Green and Kulikowski. We also have an extra footnote in the lead, because Steinacher 2022 also notes this issue. {{tq|In the following I will use the Latin term Germani to avoid ambiguity. In English “German” refers to modern Germans, “Germanic” to the ancient Germani / Germanic peoples.}} Anyway, it is not an big issue unless it gets used in the wrong way. (The article body wording was apparently trying to give the impression that Winkler was saying something different to Green and Kulikowski?) However, I think this is an article where we sometimes risk having too many sources for every point. In situations like that it can sometimes ironically become more difficult for readers and drive-by editors to verify what is sourced and how. BTW, to be fair to {{u|Zacwill}} our body text was not saying things as clearly as it could. I've tweaked that now, and I hope this resolves it.--] (]) 14:17, 18 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| ::::I guess the next question is whether we feel that we need to add a citation to the lead to prevent future tagging? I think this particular sentence has been targeted before. For a source, I think Green, p. 8 would work fine.--] (]) 14:42, 18 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| :::::I think so. His text focuses on the point nicely, and he is a philologist after all.--] (]) 17:45, 18 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Green is the right choice to substantiate and clarify this point of contention in my estimation as well. --] (]) 20:00, 18 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| == Were they "new peoples" or "new names" in the third century? == | |||
| ::::::This will be last post regarding this issue. Here is an official US Government map: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g8201e.ct001294/?r=-0.207,0.862,0.725,0.444,0 (from the Library of Congress) showing the ethnolinguistic groups within Africa. If you zoom in on the map contents and look at Bantu on the legend, you'll note the broad variety of tribes...take for instance the Bantu-designated Kota people (who speak iKota) and the Bantu-designated Makonde people (some of whom speak Yao). Both are classified under the same ethnolinguistic group Bantu, but you'll note they speak different languages. The Germanic people of antiquity are no different. Maybe you are operating from an outmoded definition of ethnolinguistic group? --] (]) 18:53, 15 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::{{re|Obenritter}} What you call "tribes" are in fact the very ethnolinguistic groups which the map intends to display: Kota is an ethnolinguistic group, Makonde is an ethnolinguistic group etc. "Bantu" etc. are the families that the languages spoken by the individual ethnolinguistic groups belong to. You are operating from a non-existent definition of "ethnolinguistic group" that is not supported by the map at all. –] (]) 05:26, 16 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::Wrong. Like I said...done with you. Way too qualified to waste my efforts further. Bantu defined VERBATIM by Oxford's dictionary: a large '''group''' of Negroid peoples of south and central Africa speaking some 300 languages (with 100 million speakers) within the Niger-Kordofanian family of languages including Bemba, Ganda, Kikuyu, Kongo, Lingala, Luba, Makua, Mbundu, Ruanda, Rundi, Shona, Sotho, Swahili, Thonga, Xhosa, and Zulu. Everything about this definition belies your interpretation not only of the map, but what constitutes an ethnic group of people speaking related languages. Stop feigning expertise.--] (]) 19:21, 16 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :::{{re|Obenritter}} "Bantu defined VERBATIM by Oxford's dictionary: a large '''group''' of Negroid peoples...". Fine, it says "group". But: neither "ethnic group" nor "ethnolinguistic group". If Oxford's dictionary stated that the group of Bantu-speaking peoples were an "ethnic group" or "ethnolinguistic group", it wouldn't be worth a penny. But luckily it does not. Each of the Bantu-speaking peoples (e.g. Bemba, Kikuyu) is an ethnolinguistic group, as the CIA map you had provided earlier aptly illustrates. I advise you'd bring up counterexamples that actually prove your assertion that "ethnolinguistic group" is a valid designation for a set of diverse ethnic groups bound together by linguistic affiliation (this is at least what the faulty/sloppy usage in the lead of this article implies), contrary to the common definition of "ethnolinguistic group" ("an ethnic group defined by its language", Reid & Giles 2010, p.252)<ref>{{cite book |last1=Reid |first1=Scott A. |last2=Giles |first2=Howard |year=2010 |chapter=Ethnolinguistic Vitality |editor-last1=Levine |editor-first1=John M. |editor-last2=Hogg |editor-first2=Michael A. |title=Encyclopedia of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations |pages=252–254 |location=Thousand Oaks |publisher=SAGE}}</ref> in academia (and beyond). –] (]) 09:35, 17 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| {{reftalk}} | |||
| *In our lead: {{tq|After this major disruption, new Germanic peoples appear for the first time in the historical record, such as the Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni.}} | |||
| Perhaps one way to look at the current wording is that it is a bit vague about whether there was one or more groups. This might be appropriate for a few reasons. We are dealing with a subject that no longer exists and we have to use classical sources that were not even interested in explaining all the things we would need to know in order to even have a discussion about it. But for Romans and Greeks, our sources, it was no big issue to unite large groups into one. Do we suspect or even know that they were mixing up groups in ways which we would probably not do today? Yes. For one thing I think we can be certain they were not dividing people up in a linguistic way, or at least not purely so.--] (]) 07:29, 17 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| **Suggestion => {{tq|In the third century, Roman authors began referring to regional groupings with new names such as Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni.}} | |||
| :{{re|Andrew Lancaster}} This is a very good point. The designation as an "ethnolinguistic group" depends on emic and etic perception. Especially for the former, we have little information about how the Germanic tribes perceived themselves, and no primary sources about the mutual intelligibility of the diverse Germanic lects in the first half of the 1st millenium. What we have, however, are documents in the Gothic language, and fragmentary attestations of other Germanic languages which strongly indicate that Proto-Germanic already had diversified beyond the language level (as described in ]). In such a case, we would have to talk about a plurality of ethnolinguistic groups. And of course – as you correctly note – all the more if the Roman and Greek sources most probably included non-Germanic speaking groups when referring to the ''Germani''. Given the uncertainty, shouldn't we then refrain from using a sharply-defined term like "ethnolinguistic group" for the entity described in this article? –] (]) 09:41, 17 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| *In the body: {{tq|The period after the Marcomannic Wars saw the emergence of peoples with new names along the Roman frontiers, which were probably formed by the merger of smaller groups. These new confederacies or peoples tended to border the Roman imperial frontier. Many ethnic names from earlier periods disappear. }} | |||
| ::I do see a point in trying not to make statements which are "too clear". I think one of the problems here is that this subject is handled by different fields, so for historians the classical writers might perhaps speak of an ethnic grouping, whereas linguists (or people thinking in terms of languages) might rightfully say there is a linguistic grouping. Is there a way to neatly separate the two without making an unreadable opening sentence? Maybe it helps to reference the appropriate linguistic articles in a second remark, and first just say this is about a classical ethnic and geographical designation. (...that shared, to some extent, their use of Germanic languages). --] (]) 17:31, 17 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| **Suggestion => {{tq|In the third century Roman authors began to use new names for large regional groupings of previously known Germanic peoples, sometimes working in coordination near different parts of the Roman imperial frontier.}} | |||
| :::I think the opening sentence already takes these two viewpoints sufficiently into account. I just intend to remove the discrepancy between taking about a single "ethnolinguistic group" and at the same time about "...peoples" (plural) that were speaker of "...languages" (plural), by rephrasing the start into "...were a collection of ethnic groups...". "Collection" is chosen rather arbitrarily (adopted from ]); there is probably a better choice, I just want to avoid something silly like "a group of ethnic groups" or "a grouping of ethnic groups". "Ethnic group" is a perfectly neutral term to designate the groups mentioned in classical sources; "tribes" would be too limiting (especially if understood in the modern non-suprematist sense), since many later Germanic groups like the Visigoths definitely had a social structure beyond the tribal level. –] (]) 07:54, 18 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| Reasoning: | |||
| *1. We should not imply that these new names suddenly appeared immediately after the Marcomanni wars in the second century. They pop up here and there over the ''following century'', and clearly weren't all seen as the names of "peoples" at first, let alone political units. (Or at least there is no simple consensus on this.) Nor did each of the new names follow the same pattern. | |||
| *2. We should not imply that that these were all "new peoples", at least at first. The Rhine groups were essentially just the same old people as before. As I think our own text says elsewhere, the term Saxon, which first appears in the 4th century, was probably not "ethnic" at that time. | |||
| *3. The names of older tribes within the groups did not at all suddenly disappear in the third century. Pohl does say that 1st century tribal names disappear (from the Roman record) in the third century, but the previous sentence implies that this might be because the Romans, going through their own problems, lost their ability to keep track of the region's ethnic complexities. {{tq|Offenbar geriet im 3. Jarhhundert nicht nur die politische Kontrolle der Römer über die Germania, sondern auch ihr ethnisches Orientierungsvermögen ins Schwanken}} (I would add that many of the old tribal names came back when Roman's were more in control of their own northern regions for a while in the fourth century, under leaders like Constantine and Julian.) | |||
| One thing I also note being mentioned by some sources is that official Roman use of Germani soldiers increased in this period and became an important factor in Roman affairs. ] (]) 08:28, 19 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| :While the "new names" are solely known through the works of Roman authors, we should avoid a wording ("Roman authors began to use") that solely attributes the terminological shifts to a question of Roman subjective perception, without any mention that these may well have been the result of objective realignments among the groups that were previously referred to collectively as ''Germani'' (reflected in "which were probably formed by the merger of smaller groups"). I don't how to phrase the middle ground between the exisiting versions and your proposed texts, but anything that doesn't entirely portray the people behind the limes as deprived from agency will do, because our sources do not necessarily put it that way either. –] (]) 11:35, 19 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| ::Yes we don't know how the Franks (for example) saw it, or indeed precisely what was going on with the Romans' minds. In fact we know very little at all. Some of the first occasions when Franks seem to have worked in a coordinated way involved Roman civil wars. And of course the stories for Saxons and Goths are probably completely different to those of the Franks and Allemani, who were apparently ruling buffer states under Roman control sometimes. Maybe we could use a passive voice construction "new names appear" or something like that.--] (]) 11:50, 19 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| == Did the first Franks live near the Weser? == | |||
| == Past tense? == | |||
| Another small point. Our text: {{tq|The Franks are first mentioned occupying territory between the Rhine and Weser. }} The citation is to Malcolm Todd. I don't have his book and the page is not currently visible via Google Books. Having recently worked on the Franks article I have seen the original position of the Franks defined over and over in terms of the lower section of the Rhine around Roman ]. The listing of tribes who were definitely Frankish is not easy, but the most certain ones do not stretch as far as the Weser. I can imagine some authors think they stretched as far as the Weser, because the area between Rhine and Weser is seen as a region with an archaeological culture. However, we don't really have clear definitions of the names of tribes living there in the third century, and there are indications that parts of the Weser might already have become "Saxon" (and perhaps Frisian?), whatever that meant at the time. Perhaps someone should look at Todd first, but other sources can be brought in to this discussion if necessary. ] (]) 08:43, 19 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| So what is the R1b haplogroup? If R1a is Slav, and R1b L's and I's are traditionally called Germanic in ethnography and genetics. Why does this article only discuss the past term? ] (]) 04:09, 27 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| :Todd writes: {{tq| A confederacy under the name ‘Franks’ formed itself out of the many small groups settled between the Rhine and the Weser and soon began to threaten the lower Rhine frontier and later the Channel coast.}} His own sources are: "P. Périn and L.-C. Feffer, ''Les Francs'' I (Paris 1987); E. James, ''The Franks'' (Oxford 1988), 34–51." So he actually does not directly talk about the territory they inhabited when first appearing in the Roman record, but about the area where they presumedly have formed. <small>(Please email me if you need a copy of Todd's book).</small> –] (]) 13:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| :I don't believe you can make such conclusions about Y DNA haplogroups. All large groups of human beings have many Y haplogroups. I suppose your suppose is amateur speculations around the internet?--] (]) 18:52, 27 October 2019 (UTC) | |||
| ::We can rephrase slightly to better reflect Todd? Or do you have a better source, Andrew?--] (]) 14:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
| :::Thanks for looking that up. It might be better to use another source. The idea that the new name involved people making new settlements is also not typical. | |||
| *I have James, and on p.35 he actually writes that {{tq|Franci ... was used to refer to various Germanic peoples living just north and east of the lower Rhine in what are now the Netherlands and the north-western part of West Germany.}} That seems much more typical to me. | |||
| *Looking at the Reallexikon of course there are several articles for this topic and many are a bit waffly, but for example the opening of the archaeological article is this: {{tq|Als Ursprungsgebiet der Frk. hat den Schrift-Qu. zufolge das rechtsrhein. Vorfeld der röm. Prov. Germania Inferior, später Germania II genannt, zu gelten.}} The quote is from page 388, and I think this is correct: {{Citation|last1=Ament|first1=Hermann|title=Franken §6. Ursprungsgebiet |encyclopedia=Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde |editor1-first=Heinrich |editor1-last=Beck |editor2-first=Dieter |editor2-last= Geuenich |editor3-first=Heiko |editor3-last=Steuer |publisher=De Gruyter |year=1995|isbn=978-3-11-014642-4|edition=2|volume=9 |pages=388–390}} | |||
| *The main history article in the Reallexikon starts like this {{tq|Die Frk. sind in den größeren Zusammenhang der Germ. einzufügen, die im Gebiet des niedergerm. Limes ihre polit. Unabhängigkeit von Rom bewahren konnten.}} The reference: {{Citation|last1=Anton|first1=Hans H. |title=Franken § 17. Erstes Auftauchen im Blickfeld des röm. Reiches und erste Ansiedlung frk. Gruppen |encyclopedia=Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde |editor1-first=Heinrich |editor1-last=Beck |editor2-first=Dieter |editor2-last= Geuenich |editor3-first=Heiko |editor3-last=Steuer |publisher=De Gruyter |year=1995|isbn=978-3-11-014642-4|edition=2|volume=9 |pages=414–419}} | |||
| *Nico Roymans gives this, {{tq|Te Late Roman frontier dynamics in the Lower Rhine region are closely linked to the appearance of the Franks. ‘Franks’ is a Roman collective label for a series of smaller tribes in the areas east and north of the Lower Rhine who had long maintained relations with the Roman Empire. However, it wasn’t until the early 3rd century that they were given this name by the Roman authorities.}}. From: {{citation|title=Romano-Frankish interaction in the Lower Rhine frontier zone from the late 3rd to the 5th century – Some key archaeological trends explored |first1=Nico |last1=Roymans|first2=Stijn|last2=Heeren|year=2021 |journal= Germania |volume=99|pages= 133-156 | doi=10.11588/ger.2021.92212 |url=https://www.academia.edu/95372330/}} | |||
| I could go on but the main pattern I keep seeing is that they live on the non-Roman side of the lower parts of the Rhine including the delta, and approximately as far south as ] went. (Somewhere north of Koblenz I believe.) --] (]) 16:10, 19 January 2025 (UTC) | |||
Latest revision as of 16:10, 19 January 2025
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What is 'Northern Europe'?
Hi, pro-Scandinavian lurker here :) Sometimes it seems as if Europe = the Continent between the Baltic and the Mediterranean, divided by Pyrenees, Alps and Balkans into North and South, leaving Scandinavia as, one might suspect, a nearly non-European afterthought up there. Being from up here, we do consider ourselves European and also as constituting "Northern Europe", where Belgium, Germany, Poland etc. are "Middle Europe'. That, at least according to the maps, which barely extend to all of Jutland, also makes us non-Germanic. If the 'Germanic' in "Germanic peoples' is based on Roman history, or even later German history, ok; but if it is based on e.g. language, and possibly on archaeology, shoudn't Scandiavia be included a bit more? Or, as a minimum, if editors feel such a subject is best presented in separate articles, perhaps include links to these articles? T 2A02:FE1:E16B:CC00:DA63:B162:420A:CA58 (talk) 03:05, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
- Which maps or wordings are you talking about?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 04:18, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
- Hi, all maps but one in this article, for instance. The article is focused on the 'Roman' perspective, though, making the choice of maps adequate for the purpose; bit of an air punch for me there. But my criticism is tied to other ways of being Germanic, see above. I am assuming that there are articles covering this, it's just not apparent from this article. T 2A02:FE1:E16B:CC00:DA63:B162:420A:CA58 (talk) 21:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's difficult to discuss Scandinavia during this time because we have almost no contemporary sources (outside archaeology) that discuss it, and hence scholars don't discuss it in much detail when discussing the Germani. That being the case, I don't think there's much that can be added about it - but it finds continual mention in other sections of the article if you just look at those covering culture etc.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:45, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
- In fact, we obviously have too few sources to clarify this problem. I remember a lecture by Reinhard Wenskus at Göttingen University, who was asked about a northern border of the ‘Germani’. He just replied that this border would not have run north of the Jutlandic Thy as Old Norse þjóð or ‘thioth’ for ‘people’. So, most tentatively, he apparently associated ‘thioth - deutsch - German’. However, apart from missing reliable sources and research, this oral opinion is not suitable for improving the article. Tympanus (talk) 14:22, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think this discussion won't go very far unless there is a more concrete proposal because I don't think anyone has consciously been avoiding Scandinavia. I know from maps I have made that I've felt the sourcing justifications are very weak for going beyond the southern parts of Scandinavia which Tacitus and others clearly something about. So I typically try to include something of Scandinavia but find myself asking if we really have any justification for pushing maps up into Norway or northern Sweden. If challenged, no I don't. There is also a second problem which is practical. While making a map about historical events mainly in mainland Europe, you realize that Scandinavia is large, and so including it all leads to a map of "Scandinavia and friends" which I once again don't think fits the bill very well.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
- I am also a lurker to this page and I would like to add my two cents.
- I have not seen any anti-Scandinavian posting on this page, as in nobody denies that the people in Scandinavia spoke a Germanic language in antiquity. For this reason I find it odd that there seems to be a faction that would like to ignore evidence supporting a Jastorf/German origin in favor of a Nordic origin who call themselves pro-Scandinavian. This seems largely to be due to a confirmation bias rather than any basis in factual evidence.
- However, the main point of contention is when newer evidence, along with ancient sources seem to show that Germanic people probably originated in Germany rather than in Scandinavia. This idea of an origin in Germany was out of vogue after WW2 due to obvious political reasons, but I feel that enough time has passed where archeology has progressed to the point that this type of archeology is no longer taboo.
- As such, this seems to bother people, presumably from Scandinavia, who were largely told that Germanic peoples, language, and culture originated there.
- My own general thought is this: if evidence shows that Germanic peoples/culture originated in the Jastorf culture of central or northern Germany(rather than the Nordic bronze age culture of Scandinavia), then this is what should be reflected on the page. The fact that this also corroborates what ancient Roman sources seem to state should not be a negative(as is often implied from "pro-Scandinavian" accounts), but rather just another tool in understanding the Germanic peoples, using both ancient sources as well as linguistics and archeological evidence. One should not be "pro-Scandinavian" or "pro-German", but rather follow the evidence where it leads to avoid a confirmation bias. 98.165.59.45 (talk) 22:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think this discussion won't go very far unless there is a more concrete proposal because I don't think anyone has consciously been avoiding Scandinavia. I know from maps I have made that I've felt the sourcing justifications are very weak for going beyond the southern parts of Scandinavia which Tacitus and others clearly something about. So I typically try to include something of Scandinavia but find myself asking if we really have any justification for pushing maps up into Norway or northern Sweden. If challenged, no I don't. There is also a second problem which is practical. While making a map about historical events mainly in mainland Europe, you realize that Scandinavia is large, and so including it all leads to a map of "Scandinavia and friends" which I once again don't think fits the bill very well.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
- In fact, we obviously have too few sources to clarify this problem. I remember a lecture by Reinhard Wenskus at Göttingen University, who was asked about a northern border of the ‘Germani’. He just replied that this border would not have run north of the Jutlandic Thy as Old Norse þjóð or ‘thioth’ for ‘people’. So, most tentatively, he apparently associated ‘thioth - deutsch - German’. However, apart from missing reliable sources and research, this oral opinion is not suitable for improving the article. Tympanus (talk) 14:22, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's difficult to discuss Scandinavia during this time because we have almost no contemporary sources (outside archaeology) that discuss it, and hence scholars don't discuss it in much detail when discussing the Germani. That being the case, I don't think there's much that can be added about it - but it finds continual mention in other sections of the article if you just look at those covering culture etc.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:45, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
- Hi, all maps but one in this article, for instance. The article is focused on the 'Roman' perspective, though, making the choice of maps adequate for the purpose; bit of an air punch for me there. But my criticism is tied to other ways of being Germanic, see above. I am assuming that there are articles covering this, it's just not apparent from this article. T 2A02:FE1:E16B:CC00:DA63:B162:420A:CA58 (talk) 21:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
Doubtful category
According to Emmanuel Todd, this is not a valid cultural category, meely a hodgepodge. Sarcelles (talk) 12:27, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'd rather stick to Malcolm Todd; and Liebeschütz, Wolfram, Heather, Halsall, Pohl, Goffart... for all their disputes, they are the subject-matter experts. –Austronesier (talk) 12:44, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- worth noting that discussion of disputes about the existence of “Germanic peoples” are already in the article and lead as well.—Ermenrich (talk) 12:56, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- I do not think a member of the communist youth(according to this wiki page) is typically going to be unbiased on such topics as this, due to the political biases that formed against this after the second world war. 98.165.59.45 (talk) 14:41, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Academic bias is not necessarily a problem, because no source is completely unbiased, but a lack of expertise or notability looks like a problem. As mentioned above, part of the issue is that the point is not even especially novel. We are already citing experts in this topic who more or less argue the same point. At first sight this sounds like an interdisciplinary side remark. Our article is citing notable experts from the directly relevant fields.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- What are his arguements? Gelbom (talk) 01:44, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- We should only discuss his arguments here if they are notable, expert, and ideally different from opinions the article already represents. Remember this is not a discussion forum. So the question is whether anyone has a concrete edit proposal, or is likely to be able to develop one from such a source.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:54, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Germani are Germans in English???
A cn tag has been added to our opening sentences, on these words Another term, ancient Germans, is considered problematic by many scholars since it suggests identity with present-day Germans
. Many sources have been discussed for such statements on this talk page in past versions of the article, but when I went to confirm that this is covered in the body I notice that we now have this surprising statement: The direct equivalents in English are, however, Germans for Germani and Germany for Germania
. This is being sourced from the last paragraph of a preface to a work that is only being used to back this one sentence up: Winkler, Martin M. (2016). Arminius the Liberator : myth and ideology. Oxford University Press. It is on Google books . He does not use the term "direct equivalents" but he does say that Germanen and Germania are called Germans and Germany in English, noting that this usage breaks down a distinction which is clear in German. He says he will use "ancient Germans", and explains, the blurring is not such a bad thing for his book, which is about 20th-century mythmaking, because such blurring is part of the story he is telling about ideologies and nationalism. I think that although the sentence we have is not literally wrong it distorts what both this work and more specialist works emphasize, which is that academics are uncomfortable with the lack of common distinct terms in everyday English, and tend to use other terms. I will try to tweak the wording, but I am a little uncomfortable that we are using sources about other topics like this, when we have so many possibilities to use sources that are about the exact topic of our article. It looks like cherry picking? Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:25, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- I’m not sure that I understand the problem with Winkler? Also, we have Green and Kulikowski in the next sentence discussing something similar.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:43, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- I also removed the cn tag. I’m not sure why even veteran editors feel this need to go around adding tags to the leads of articles when they clearly haven’t bothered looking at the body.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:46, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- Having fixed the text my only concern about Winkler is just that we don't seem to need that specific source, for that specific information. Like you say, we also have Green and Kulikowski. We also have an extra footnote in the lead, because Steinacher 2022 also notes this issue.
In the following I will use the Latin term Germani to avoid ambiguity. In English “German” refers to modern Germans, “Germanic” to the ancient Germani / Germanic peoples.
Anyway, it is not an big issue unless it gets used in the wrong way. (The article body wording was apparently trying to give the impression that Winkler was saying something different to Green and Kulikowski?) However, I think this is an article where we sometimes risk having too many sources for every point. In situations like that it can sometimes ironically become more difficult for readers and drive-by editors to verify what is sourced and how. BTW, to be fair to Zacwill our body text was not saying things as clearly as it could. I've tweaked that now, and I hope this resolves it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:17, 18 January 2025 (UTC)- I guess the next question is whether we feel that we need to add a citation to the lead to prevent future tagging? I think this particular sentence has been targeted before. For a source, I think Green, p. 8 would work fine.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:42, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- I think so. His text focuses on the point nicely, and he is a philologist after all.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- Green is the right choice to substantiate and clarify this point of contention in my estimation as well. --Obenritter (talk) 20:00, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- I think so. His text focuses on the point nicely, and he is a philologist after all.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- I guess the next question is whether we feel that we need to add a citation to the lead to prevent future tagging? I think this particular sentence has been targeted before. For a source, I think Green, p. 8 would work fine.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:42, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
- Having fixed the text my only concern about Winkler is just that we don't seem to need that specific source, for that specific information. Like you say, we also have Green and Kulikowski. We also have an extra footnote in the lead, because Steinacher 2022 also notes this issue.
- I also removed the cn tag. I’m not sure why even veteran editors feel this need to go around adding tags to the leads of articles when they clearly haven’t bothered looking at the body.—-Ermenrich (talk) 13:46, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
Were they "new peoples" or "new names" in the third century?
- In our lead:
After this major disruption, new Germanic peoples appear for the first time in the historical record, such as the Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni.
- Suggestion =>
In the third century, Roman authors began referring to regional groupings with new names such as Franks, Goths, Saxons, and Alemanni.
- Suggestion =>
- In the body:
The period after the Marcomannic Wars saw the emergence of peoples with new names along the Roman frontiers, which were probably formed by the merger of smaller groups. These new confederacies or peoples tended to border the Roman imperial frontier. Many ethnic names from earlier periods disappear.
- Suggestion =>
In the third century Roman authors began to use new names for large regional groupings of previously known Germanic peoples, sometimes working in coordination near different parts of the Roman imperial frontier.
- Suggestion =>
Reasoning:
- 1. We should not imply that these new names suddenly appeared immediately after the Marcomanni wars in the second century. They pop up here and there over the following century, and clearly weren't all seen as the names of "peoples" at first, let alone political units. (Or at least there is no simple consensus on this.) Nor did each of the new names follow the same pattern.
- 2. We should not imply that that these were all "new peoples", at least at first. The Rhine groups were essentially just the same old people as before. As I think our own text says elsewhere, the term Saxon, which first appears in the 4th century, was probably not "ethnic" at that time.
- 3. The names of older tribes within the groups did not at all suddenly disappear in the third century. Pohl does say that 1st century tribal names disappear (from the Roman record) in the third century, but the previous sentence implies that this might be because the Romans, going through their own problems, lost their ability to keep track of the region's ethnic complexities.
Offenbar geriet im 3. Jarhhundert nicht nur die politische Kontrolle der Römer über die Germania, sondern auch ihr ethnisches Orientierungsvermögen ins Schwanken
(I would add that many of the old tribal names came back when Roman's were more in control of their own northern regions for a while in the fourth century, under leaders like Constantine and Julian.)
One thing I also note being mentioned by some sources is that official Roman use of Germani soldiers increased in this period and became an important factor in Roman affairs. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:28, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
- While the "new names" are solely known through the works of Roman authors, we should avoid a wording ("Roman authors began to use") that solely attributes the terminological shifts to a question of Roman subjective perception, without any mention that these may well have been the result of objective realignments among the groups that were previously referred to collectively as Germani (reflected in "which were probably formed by the merger of smaller groups"). I don't how to phrase the middle ground between the exisiting versions and your proposed texts, but anything that doesn't entirely portray the people behind the limes as deprived from agency will do, because our sources do not necessarily put it that way either. –Austronesier (talk) 11:35, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
- Yes we don't know how the Franks (for example) saw it, or indeed precisely what was going on with the Romans' minds. In fact we know very little at all. Some of the first occasions when Franks seem to have worked in a coordinated way involved Roman civil wars. And of course the stories for Saxons and Goths are probably completely different to those of the Franks and Allemani, who were apparently ruling buffer states under Roman control sometimes. Maybe we could use a passive voice construction "new names appear" or something like that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:50, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
Did the first Franks live near the Weser?
Another small point. Our text: The Franks are first mentioned occupying territory between the Rhine and Weser.
The citation is to Malcolm Todd. I don't have his book and the page is not currently visible via Google Books. Having recently worked on the Franks article I have seen the original position of the Franks defined over and over in terms of the lower section of the Rhine around Roman Germania Inferior. The listing of tribes who were definitely Frankish is not easy, but the most certain ones do not stretch as far as the Weser. I can imagine some authors think they stretched as far as the Weser, because the area between Rhine and Weser is seen as a region with an archaeological culture. However, we don't really have clear definitions of the names of tribes living there in the third century, and there are indications that parts of the Weser might already have become "Saxon" (and perhaps Frisian?), whatever that meant at the time. Perhaps someone should look at Todd first, but other sources can be brought in to this discussion if necessary. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:43, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
- Todd writes:
A confederacy under the name ‘Franks’ formed itself out of the many small groups settled between the Rhine and the Weser and soon began to threaten the lower Rhine frontier and later the Channel coast.
His own sources are: "P. Périn and L.-C. Feffer, Les Francs I (Paris 1987); E. James, The Franks (Oxford 1988), 34–51." So he actually does not directly talk about the territory they inhabited when first appearing in the Roman record, but about the area where they presumedly have formed. (Please email me if you need a copy of Todd's book). –Austronesier (talk) 13:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)- We can rephrase slightly to better reflect Todd? Or do you have a better source, Andrew?--Ermenrich (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for looking that up. It might be better to use another source. The idea that the new name involved people making new settlements is also not typical.
- We can rephrase slightly to better reflect Todd? Or do you have a better source, Andrew?--Ermenrich (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
- I have James, and on p.35 he actually writes that
Franci ... was used to refer to various Germanic peoples living just north and east of the lower Rhine in what are now the Netherlands and the north-western part of West Germany.
That seems much more typical to me. - Looking at the Reallexikon of course there are several articles for this topic and many are a bit waffly, but for example the opening of the archaeological article is this:
Als Ursprungsgebiet der Frk. hat den Schrift-Qu. zufolge das rechtsrhein. Vorfeld der röm. Prov. Germania Inferior, später Germania II genannt, zu gelten.
The quote is from page 388, and I think this is correct: Ament, Hermann (1995), "Franken §6. Ursprungsgebiet", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 9 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, pp. 388–390, ISBN 978-3-11-014642-4 - The main history article in the Reallexikon starts like this
Die Frk. sind in den größeren Zusammenhang der Germ. einzufügen, die im Gebiet des niedergerm. Limes ihre polit. Unabhängigkeit von Rom bewahren konnten.
The reference: Anton, Hans H. (1995), "Franken § 17. Erstes Auftauchen im Blickfeld des röm. Reiches und erste Ansiedlung frk. Gruppen", in Beck, Heinrich; Geuenich, Dieter; Steuer, Heiko (eds.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 9 (2 ed.), De Gruyter, pp. 414–419, ISBN 978-3-11-014642-4 - Nico Roymans gives this,
Te Late Roman frontier dynamics in the Lower Rhine region are closely linked to the appearance of the Franks. ‘Franks’ is a Roman collective label for a series of smaller tribes in the areas east and north of the Lower Rhine who had long maintained relations with the Roman Empire. However, it wasn’t until the early 3rd century that they were given this name by the Roman authorities.
. From: Roymans, Nico; Heeren, Stijn (2021), "Romano-Frankish interaction in the Lower Rhine frontier zone from the late 3rd to the 5th century – Some key archaeological trends explored", Germania, 99: 133–156, doi:10.11588/ger.2021.92212
I could go on but the main pattern I keep seeing is that they live on the non-Roman side of the lower parts of the Rhine including the delta, and approximately as far south as Germania Inferior went. (Somewhere north of Koblenz I believe.) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:10, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
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