A scratched hint of ancient ties stirs national furies in Europe

[lowsocks]

This might be more suitable in an "off-topic" sub-forum. But since we do not seem to have one, I will post it here.

https://www.ekathimerini.com/nytimes/11 ... in-europe/

To summarize:
A bone fragment (from cattle) was found at Lany, in the Czech Republic. The archaeological site is thought to be a Slavic village, with the bone dating from the sixth century (i.e., about 1400 years ago). The issue is that there appear to be some rune markings on the bone. And runes were a Germanic system of writing. (This predates the Cyrillic alphabet, which was developed by the Greek monks Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century.)

The suggestion, then, is that there might have been some peaceful contact, and perhaps even a transfer of knowledge, between Germans and Slavs, rather than just constant fighting between two hostile groups. (And, to give some connection to this forum, I think they would have had to learn each other's language, at least partially, for this transfer to have occurred.)

There is, I think, some uncertainty in how to interpret the find. But still, one might suppose this would be a "good news" story. In its own small way, it might help bring people together. But the opposite has occurred. This archaeological find has some people, particularly nationalist Slavs, very upset. In addition to denial, there have even been death threats against one of the archaeologists involved.

[DaveAgain]

The suggestion, then, is that there might have been some peaceful contact, and perhaps even a transfer of knowledge, between Germans and Slavs, rather than just constant fighting between two hostile groups. (And, to give some connection to this forum, I think they would have had to learn each other's language, at least partially, for this transfer to have occurred.)

I have a vague memory of video, i think about a computer based comparitive linguistics model, suggesting that Slavic languages branched from Germanic.

[Cavesa]

I haven't read about this in any Czech newspaper, it hasn't gotten to me through any other channel. So, thanks for the information . I think the "furies" will be just a few morons, that's it. Hopefully, they'll be found (death treats are of course illegal and not taken lightly). But based on this article, I'd expect massive demonstrations with violence

I don't find the idea of the contacts revolutionary at all, but of course I don't mean to take the discovery too lightly. It's great to get physical evidence of those contacts, but we already know that we are genetically 1/3 germanic, 1/3 slavic, approximately 1/4 celtic, and the rest are other sources (usually later ones, such as a few % of swedes, I think we can all imagine where this came from). The mix clearly had to start somewhere, and it is a "suspiciously" well balanced mixed.

Any "hey, we are so slavic" opinions are mostly held by the least educated part of the population with worse moral standards, and used for various kinds of propaganda among the "nationalists". (Just briefly: most of the "nationalist" groups are actually pro-putin and generally in favour of various totalitarian regimes and such stuff. They are failures in the free world, so they want to take away opportunities from people like me, to make everybody just as miserable as them. Death threats from them surprise nobody.).

We know the three kinds of tribes existed on the lands that later became my country. We know they existed approximately in the same era (but I am not an archaeologist or historian to dig in the "details"). And while it is definitely always interesting to find proofs of some kinds of cultural exchange, it would be weird to just assume there was never any.

What I find much more fascinating about the discovery: writing used earlier than we had assumed and perhaps more broadly than we had assumed. Btw the cow bone is 1400 years old, the writings "just" 400-500 years old, from the 6th century AD. Three hundred years before the old slavonic introduction.

That's what I find beautiful about the discovery, people in the region were more clever and advanced, than we'd expect. I just wish we had any better preserved pieces of writing. We can look at the oldest complaint writing from the city of Ur, because it's on a stone tablet. I guess we'd have tons of those (if ancestors were like us), if only they opted for something more durable than bones to complain on

[Iversen]

The article mentioned by the OP from ekathimerini.com doesn't actually show the inscription itself, but it can be seen here (source: em.muni.cz). I'm no an expert, but it actually does look like runes, and quite possibly from the Elder Futhark. It's somewhat surprising that an inscription turns up in modern Czechia, but in Russia there were lot's of vikings that wrote messages to each other on birch bark in places like Novgorod and Kiev (cfr. the Chronicle of Nestor), and there is proof of intense trade connections between Denmark and Poland (those in Russia were more likely Swedes).

There are slightly different informations concerning the demise of the Elder Futhark, but maybe the 8. century would be a fair estimate. Around that time the runic alphabet was subjected to the whims of unknown rationalization experts who (as you might expect) made it a far less useful means of communication, but the number of Runic inscriptions nevertheless rose. The muni.cz article claims that only 17 inscriptions in the Elder Futhark are known - I doubt that this low estimate is correct, given the number of inscriptions from before 800 AD I personally have seen in museums and books, but the number is definitely not overwhelming. However if you compare the signs of the inscription with those in the Wikipedia article about the younger Futhark then neither alphabet fits totally, but the last two are only found in the Elder Futhark, not the newer one. So I think we have to accept the claim - this is written in the Elder Futhark, and its a remarkable find. But probably produced by a tourist or settler from Scandinavia or Russia/Ukraine rather than a local inhabitant of the area.

As for the connections betwwen Germanic peoples and Slavs:

From a linguistic point of view the connections are tenuous, which the Slavic languages belonging to the satem languages and the Germanic ones to the centum ones. This doesn't exclude the possibility of contacts and exchange of loanwords, but basically the two families are about as far from each other on the family tree as can be.

If you look at the genetics there is one curious puzzle: the Northern and Eastern Slavic people represent the R1A1 haplogroup and all the Germanic people are predominantly R1B1, which speaks for two different invasion wawes. But the R1B1 invasion by the Yamnaya is supposed to have started in around 2800 BC and carried through within a few hundred years, whereas most sources in the old days claimed that the Slavic people didn't enter Eastern Europe until after the murderous turmoil of the Hunnic wars. Even the Celts passed by, and they probably founded Bratislava - but that's about 2200 years back in time. Later on the Germanic tribes also built a presence in the area: the Gothic king Ermanrik (or 'Aírmanareiks') ruled a realm from the Botnic Bay to the Black Sea - but Attila crushed that kingdom. Some Goths chose to enter his army, others left the area. And then the Bulgars turned up on the Balkan Peninsula and the kingdom of Greater Moravia was established and all that .. but the total dominance of R1A1 in Eastern Europe is difficult to reconcile with such late developments. My own hunch is that the forebears of today's R1A1 entered Eastern Europe thousands of years ago rather than after the Migration Period in the 400-500s.

By the way: a tip for those who really like Runes and/or Anglosaxon: the Danish Wikipedia-article quotes the whole of the famous 'Runic poem' in glorious Old English.