Getae and Dacians? Are they the same? Or is this unknowable?

[Robert Vermaat]

I think it does. Kulikowski seems to have had the right idea about the Goths being largely formed in the area of the Sântana-de-Mure?/?ernjachov culture. That area included other groups, such as Taifali, Sarmatians, Dacians, early Slavs and other Germanic groups, and the (simplified) two main Gothic groups as they burst into history seem to have reached that form only there.
The problem is, what went before?

Jordanes wrote down the Gothic self-image, being that they came from Scandinavia.
Trouble is, Jordanes also misidentified the earlier Getae and their history as similar to the Goths on account of their name alone, and wrote that down as well - this is where our fellow-member Diegis gets his ammunition from, largely. he's following Jordanes when it comes to the Getae as Goths (and fills in the blanks that the Dacians are related to both and really the main group, without proper evidence).

Back to Jordanes, who is our prime evidence for the Goths coming from Scandinavia, a story that has been relegated to legend in the face of archaeological evidence that 'the Goths' evidently did not exist before the Sântana-de-Mure?/?ernjachov culture.

Well then if that's true, is Jordanes a fibber?
Kulikowski, Halsall and other think so, BUT with a consideration. You see, the Goths clearly are an east Germanic group on the firm basis of linguistic evidence, and were probably the dominant group in the Sântana-de-Mure?/?ernjachov culture. That means, as is acknowledged, that they arrived in the Sântana-de-Mure?/?ernjachov area probably as some sort of a group, and although we can no longer say that these proto-Goths (for want of a better term) WERE the Wielbark culture, they most probably arrived from the Baltic area by routes covered by that Wielbark culture.

So Jordanes, although incorrect about the exact details, nonetheless has penned down a shadow of history about where the leading elements of the Goths came from originally - or at least those who remembered their origins.
Jordanes was a product of his age. he had no scientific models to follow and could never have separated legend from history. We may thank his for writing his work.