Who inhabited Transylvania first between Romanians and Hungarians?
>>18755957Romanians didn't exist back then but there was definitely an Orthodox and Vulgar Latin speaking people in the region long before the Magyars showed up.
>>18755970Not certain at all""Avars"", could have been first and Avars could actually have been magyarophones
>>18755975Unlikely, the avars were 90 percent north asian whereas the magyars were closer to volga tatars
>>18755976I think avars were mongolian
>>18755976Not talking genetics here, just cultureThe actual magyars might have been turkophone rulers on settled magyarophone avars
>>18755975It is highly likely Avars are the original human population of Transylvania given this region has been populated for millennia and was part of the Roman Empire.
>>18755957It's a massive basin in the centre of Europe. So it's a clusterfuck of dozens of ethnic groups and tribes constantly invading and intermixing without too much clarity.Still here's what we do know:The earliest know civilisations in Transylvania were the Scythians and Dacians, present from roughly 1st Century BC - 4th centuries AD. Many Romanian nationalists claim Romanians are the descendents of the Dacians. Certainly they make up a part of their ancestry, but there's also no evidence for much of their claims.The Romans tried to conquer Transylvania from the Scythians and Dacians under the reign of Trojan but largely failed.We know in the 3rd Century AD various East Germanic tribes, and a tribe known as the Carpi (potentially Thracians) invaded the region during the reign of Aurelius. In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Goths, and Huns - under the infamous Attila - also settled the region.In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Gepids (an East Germanic tribe), Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Avars all settled in the region. The Avars being the most significant and numerous of this groups.Now, we don't know when Slavs arrived in the region, but we know they must at least pre-date the Avars. The Slavs surrendered to and accepted rule by the Avars without really fighting back. And in fact the only reason we know Slavs were there are because there is a mention of them largely accepting being conquered by the Avars. There's no mention of them there before that.The Avars ruled region, with the other tribes (Slavic, Germanic, etc) living under their rule from the 5th century through to the late 8th / early 9th century.Throughout these centuries the Frankish Empire attempted to invade, over and over, without much success - but did greatly weaken the Avar and Slavic forces.
>>18755994Then in the early 9th Century, Transylvania, now weakened by the Franks, was invaded by the Bulgarian Empire. In the late 9th Century, the Magyars, later known as Hungarians, invaded and seized the lands from the Bulgarians.In the 12th Century, the King of Hungary invited Saxons to settle and develop the land, and these people became the Transylvanian Saxons,Also, remember how the Romans tried to invade the region a few times? Well the language stuck around, and those who spoke a Romance language became know as the Vlachs.The Vlach people are first mentioned in the 13th Century, but Romance speakers had been in the region since Roman times, and it's likely their identity slowly developed over time since then. Like the Greeks, the Transylvanian Romance speakers likely called themselves "Romans", with Vlach being an exonym for these people.Most modern historians believe the Vlach people form the basis of the core of modern Romanian culture, with lots of admixture from Slavs, Dacians, and other aforementioned peoples.Transylvania would remain under Hungarian rule until the 17th Century, when it was conquered by the Habsburgs and annexed into the Austrian Empire, and well the rest is modern history.
>>18755994So - in short, the answer to your question depends on "What do you mean by a Romanian?"The Magyars, or Hungarians, arrived for a fact in the 800s. That part is simple enough.But Romanian identity is much less clear, because it slowly emerged over many centuries from a mixing of different peoples.If you consider the Dacians and the earliest speakers of Romance languages in the region to be Romanians, then the Romanians were there since Roman times. In which case they predate Hungarians by at least 800 years.But Romanians didn't consider themselves as a people group until the Vlach identity developed in the early Middle Ages, even if their ancestors had lived in the region for centuries prior, they just saw themselves as Romans before then.And the Vlach / Romanian people also certainly weren't a majority in the region until long after the Slavs, Avars, Huns, and Magyars had already arrived.
>>18755975>""Avars"", could have been first and Avars could actually have been magyarophones>>18755983>It is highly likely Avars are the original human population of TransylvaniaThis is total nonsense. The Avars were originally a nomadic people from the steppes of Central Asia who migrated west into the Pannonian basin. There is legitimate debate over whether they were Turkic, Mongolic, possibly even Tungusic. But the Huns, Goths, Slavs, Dacians, Romans, and others were in Transylvania before they ever showed up.
>>18756017I meant to say unlikely, that is a typo
>>18756018My bad.
>>18755998>>18755983Romanian language shows no traces of contact with any of the Germanic peoples, Huns and Avars who ruled Transylvania after Rome evacuated the province. It does, however, has plenty of loanwords from South Slavic and even Albanian.The existence of closely related Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian languages on the Balkans indicates the Vlach population migrated from the West Balkans.Also, Transylvanian toponyms are entirely Slavic in origin.
>>18756023Except that is blatantly wrong and there are numerous words in Hungarian of Germanic or Hungarian etymology. And this is despite the aggressive 19th century effort to Latinise the language,
>>18756024*Romanian
>>18756024>Germanic or Hungarian etymology*Of High Medieval origin.I was talking about Gothic, Gepid, Longobard etc. influence from the Migration period.
>>18756039>Migration period.**Barbarian invasions period. The reason the Roman garrison slaughtered them at the border is because the equivalent of the Roman military secret service obtained information & confirmed they were in alliance with the Hunnic horde to destabilize the empire via biomass infiltration by any means. Asymmetric warfare before the term was invented. Later, Byzantines found out that the Sassanids convinced the Huns & the barbarian population to outflank the empire to weaken & overtake the near middle east. That's why old propaganda war pamphlets refer to the kaiser/junkers as “The Hun(s)”. It wasn't mere hyperbole. Now you understand history a bit better.
>>18756039List 5 Gepid words.
>>18756048gep, pid, nid, nib, nig
>>18755998>Transylvania would remain under Hungarian rule until the 17th Century, when it was conquered by the Habsburgs and annexed into the Austrian EmpireHabsburg Austria did not conquer Hungary. They merged. And even then, Hungary was still seen as a seperate state with its own parlament. Eventually Austria had to accept Hungary as an equal, which is why we later got the Austria-Hungary empire
>>18755998>>18756007I think this is the most fair assessment, that Vlachs were the original Romanians, but that Vlachs were an identity that emerged out of the people that were already there, and not some profound migration of yet another people from the east.So they probably have some linage back to the Dacians, while the majority of their ancestry being a mixed bag of virtually all the different tribes that moved through and settled the areas as the centuries passed.This, while the Hungarians (Magyars) should be considered a completely seperate and largely homogeneous entity with a clear arrival date and clear identity.
>>18755957Olah were sheepherders, I mean that’s just what they did, so they didn’t really “live” in erdely as we think of it in the modern sense, they just visited seasonally.
>>18755957Why did you steal my thread? Just post there>>18756125This is not really true, Romanians clearly maintained their sense of latinity despite likely being outside of the Roman Byzantine empire.Proto-Romanian was a unitary language until like the 9th or 10th century, which again makes it likely they felt like a single groupThey just weren't in Transylvania or Moldavia most likely
