11-18-2009, 08:00 AM
Quote:
Salut R?zvan,
I think you made your point quite clear, because this is what I also said I don't agree with. The evidence of Dacian (and other native dialects north of Haemus) is scarce. We don't even know for sure the area in which Dacian was spoken, let alone that it was a lingua franca. Do you know any instance of Bastarne speaking to Sarmatians using Dacian? I don't.
Also I'm not sure the Dacians (or the Getae) were that numerous. I know what Herodotus wrote of Thracians, but that's no accurate census :wink:
Yes, unfortunately we have few sources "to work with", and dont know how exact they are. Sometimes greek historians (and others like romans too sometimes) exaggerate the numbers, like the persian army at Thermopile for ex. However, if we put togheter thracians from sout of Haemus, phrygians, even cimmerians, and ofcourse getians (dacians), including here those "getae" tribes mentioned before, tyragetae, tysagetae and masagetae (even if later ones was probably in a similar situation with goths, a mix of dacian and scythian/iranic elements), we can reach the same conclusion as Herodotus, with thracians the most numerous peoples on Earth, after indians. Anyway, we can make a general idea, from other sources, regarding just Dacians now, if we look at regions where "dava" (dacian towns/fortreses) apear, and this is quite a widespread areas, from south of Danube to today Slovakia. As well, Dacian army of Burebista was considered able to reach a number of 200,000 soldiers (acording to Strabo). This was calculated by some historians that come from a number of at least 2,000,000 peoples, if not more (the ratio of 1soldier to 10 peoples was in fact more an ideal, and not allways easy to achieve). And i dont think in time of Decebal the population number changed too much, or droped too much, even if Decebalus, agree, doesnt rule over the same amount of teritories and peoples as Burebista, but dacians didnt drop their number after all. Comparing this with just 100,000 goths of Teodoric the Great, a multiethnic conglomerat, where probably even some dacians was part, even they passed in south of Danube. Bastarnae wasnt any big tribe, especialy after Burebista campaignes agaisnt them, and i dont know either about sarmatians in the area to be a huge number, or being too influent, since not just numerical, but from cultural (and even social) point of view (military too for a long time) Dacians was the dominant power no doubt.
Razvan A.
