In present day is well established what a Slav mean,it mean a Slavic speaker,however we talk about 6th and 7th century when the name wasn't apply in that way,do you realise that?We speak of Sclavenes and Antes as Slavs today,how are "Antes" Slavs? they are not Sclavenes but Antes historians atributed them to East Slavs.Do you realise that those were multilingual societies speaking more then one language,what is your evidence to count them as Slavs? if they were Slavs assuming because spoke Slavic,so were then also Avars Slavs because they too spoke a language they all understood-supposedly Slavic,do you realise the question? you do not apply a 21th century meaning in the 6th century without proof,but just because you think it is true.We do not look in history that way,Curta question is very right therefore.
Here is your fallacy: I do not take a 21st century meaning and apply it to the 6th century without proof, I apply it with proof. I just think that the same rules apply all the time. If for example, I take the language families of Western and Central Europe, that question is very clear from the linguistic side:
"who is Celtic?"> someone who speaks a Celtic language.
"who is Germanic?"> someone who speaks a Germanic language.
"who is Basque?"> someone who speaks a Vasconic language.
For the Celtic languages, we have extensive evidence for much of Central and Western Europe in the Antiquity (including some written texts). For the Germanic languages, we also have a fair bit of evidence in Central Europe in Antiquity. For Basque the situation is a lot weaker, we have the Aquitanian (Old Basque) place names and personal names from Antiquity. Basically,
why should this approach be different for Slavic languages? Because Slavic languages are special snowflakes for which the rules of linguistics do not apply? Hardly. So in my opinion, someone cannot be a Slav without speaking a Slavic language. Were the Sclavenes and Antes were thus Slavic? They were the earliest recorded people to be unanimously identifiable as Slavic. And when Curta makes the (condescending) statement that Prehistoric Slavs are 'fairytales', he does not solve anything with it. The Slavic languages have to come from somewhere. In my opinion, the question "who is a Slav" (read: who speaks a Slavic language) is just as valid in the 21st century as it is in the 6th century or the 1st century. Only that we do not know with certainty who were the Slavic speakers in the 1st century (unless you follow Curta's fallacious postulates to the end and make the ridiculous claim that no one spoke Slavic in the 1st century because it was an invented conlang).
Sclavenes were located in the Danube basin,precisely in today Romania,there is no single evidence they brought material culture from the north,or they came from there,cherry picking cultures without evidence or because we believe so...we can easy claim a culture in Spain as Slavic that way.
Well, that is an obviously silly (but in my opinion educative) example that you pick Spain for the Slavic homeland: we cannot just claim that. But we have evidence to disprove that idea, because we have several lines of evidence: first, we have place names and ethnic names from the Antiquity (the Roman period), and we have no evidence for Slavic place names there (we do have Celtic, Iberian, Punic and Greek names attested for Spain, in approximately that order of frequency from most numerous to least numerous). The other line of evidence comes from the modern Slavic languages themselves (see loanwords, comparative method and internal reconstruction for further reference), not to mention the fact that the most closely related languages inside the greater Indo-European family are the Baltic languages, which places the language family firmly into eastern Europe.
Acculturation or whatever Curta does not go in languages,he is archeologist and historian,the Slavic history in the 19th century was written on supposedly most archaic river names of Slavic origin located in western Ukraine,hence the urheimat was there,so from there they were migrating all over the place,without archeological proves or anything like that! Archeology was working according to that idea.Linguistic violation on archeology,languages fundamental assumption of modern nationalism.
The reconstructed homeland based on river names is still valid in my opinion (and not easily overturned), because the error is not in the methodology. What other explanation do you have that the most archaic Slavic river names are found precisely there? According to Curta's ideas, they shouldn't be there. To me, asking these questions is not tied with 'modern nationalism' in any way. Linguistics do not violate archaeology. Archaeology has to be interpreted differently to be compatible with the linguistic evidence.
You should ask this question to those that propose a migrationist model not to Curta,since they assert that Zupa system was brought from the urheimat in Croatia and Slovenia,but such system never in history existed there,nor in other Slavic country! especialy the one they claim as homeland,can you imagine the blunder.So why does exist in Croatia and Slovenia then?
In my opinion, it would be more sensible to assume that it is a feature that developed in-situ on the western Balkans.
Curta does not choose the "Slavs" to be or appear in Romania and just because they were there and more north of them live Slavs today as well doesn't mean they came from there or this must be atributed to them,there is entire field of history dedicated to them Wends (North Slavs) in Fredegar chronicle i guess in his book.As for those language spread amongst Avar khaganate etc is again work on linguists such is Omeljan Pritsak and so on..
My problem is that Curta does not explain anything. He basically declares (and its a declaration, and a fairly arbitrary one) that linguistics has it all wrong, but I do not see any reason to assume so. If the methodology works for any other language or language family, why should it not work for Slavic? The error is not in the methods (see above), the error is not in the data (see above). In science, if you want to replace an existing model, you need to come up with a better model that incorporates the existing evidence and explains it in a more satisfying, more accurate fashion. When you say (like Curta seems to imply) "existing evidence is worthless", that is not coming up with a better model, that is dogmatism.
Also Taranis i would like to know which tribes you count a Germanic in Central Europe,cause some are counted as such with little or no evidence,i believe that people in Central Europe too,are largely homogeneous.
Little evidence: yes. No evidence: that would be wrong. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of tribes (somewhat anachronistic):
- Alemanni
- Anglii
- Angrivarii
- Bructeri
- Burgundi
- Caninefates
- Chamavii
- Chauci
- Chatti
- Cherusci
- Cugerni
- Frisii
- Frugundians
- Goths/Gotones
- Hermunduri
- Langobardi
- Marcomanni
- Quadi
- Rugians
- Suebi
- Vandals
These are complemented with place names that have the endings "-burg-" and "-furd-" in them.The critical point here is those tribes in the eastern parts that inhabited areas that became Slavic-speaking following the Migration Period.
