Insights into Danube's Arya : The Thracians - Part I

Origins

As men who have interest in the topics of history, philosophy and religion we very often find ourselves reading about different people and their histories and views and we often carry ourselves away in it. No matter what the readers motive is, be it historical, spiritual, plain interest or something else, he will be offered interesting stories and information in the following writings.

The Indo-Europeans being one of the most if not the most influential people of the past centuries, have, as we know, with time split into many branches. Nevertheless as from father to son they have kept to their perennial views and customs, but also incorporated alien ones whenever they found truth in them. One such branch are the Daco-Thracians, Danube's golden sons, the Thraix, the rhomphaia wielding, wagon riding children of Ares. We will also take a look at the Getae or Dacians, who were kin to the Thracians, but north of the Danube.

In the next articles I will give an objective view of their origins, fate and religion, but in the current article I shall start with the historical origin of the Thracians and possibly a meta-historical one.

Sons of Ares

The first written mention of their stock is in the Iliad where their ancestor is Thrax who himself is son of the god of war Ares, thus solidifying the divine origin of these people and more specifically to the idea of war and virility. There is also mention of the Thracian king Rhesus (deriving from *reg-, 'to rule') who led his people to war on the side of the Trojans. He is described as riding on a golden chariot which itself is pulled by horses ''brighter than the snow'', bearing golden armour ''too splendid for any mortal man to carry, and meet only for the gods'', leading a uncountable of heroes. The etymological root of the Thracians most likely comes from one of the tribes of Thrace.

Dacians were called ''Getae'' by Greek historians, while the ''Daci'' name came from the Romans who said that this was how these people called themself. The etymology of ''Daci'' is quite complex, but according to most theories it has to do with wolfs. The great Romanian thinker Mircea Eliade has made many great points in support of the wolf cult and self appropriation with wolves among the Dacians.

Archeological and genetic insights

Let us delve now into the more historical plain in order to explain their origins.
It is accepted in modern historiography that these people were formed from the invading and conquering Kurgan people of the steppe (Indo-Europeans) and the indigenous Neolithic population. Sadly, enough the archeological cultures in the Balkans are not too well excavated, researched nor defined, for instance on the territory of today's Bulgaria, there may be over 60 thousand kurgans burials from different periods of which only around a thousand are excavated. But we can be sure that the Indo-European invaders did at some point come and conquered the lands of today's Balkans.

At some point the Neolithic cultures in the Balkans altogether cease to exist or start showing signs of outside material culture and domination. The Bronze age in the Balkans is not too well researched, but we can connect it with the Ezero and late Karanovo archaeological cultures, which show the appearance of kurgans, cremation, bronze weapons and horse burials. Axes, chariots, cremations, kurgans, gold, hierarchy, Solar cultism, temples, and sacred sites - all these things note to a shift of ideals and culture. The conquering may have not been always via extermination (note that up to a half the Balkan's people genetic composure is of Neolithic descend), but because a superior stock of people was enforcing themself .

The most recent study of genetics from bronze age Bulgaria (Svetoslav Stamov's study together with Harvard University and David Reich) show to a significant shift of paternal haplogroups among excavated burials. For instance, from a predominantly E type male haplogroups at one point the male lineages in archaeological findings shift to mostly I2a and R1a type . We can conclude that the Daco-Thracans formed as a result of a mixture between Indo-Europeans and the conquered Neolithic population with the latter having a big part in their composure since Southern Europe has been been occupied by them for quite longer that the rest of the continent. This together with the favourable conditions of the South probably meant that the population of old Europeans wasn't too small.

From ancient sources we know that these sons of Ares were everyone's favourite mercenaries for war and were described as most brave and great warriors. Danube's Arya were quite fragmented into small kingdoms and only rarely united into a single kingdom, but still were feared by their neighbours. This short introduction will pave the way to the next part of the series where we will look into the culture, religion, cults, history, society and views of Danube's finest.

The Sun Rider's Telegram Channel