Sons of Japheth: Part VIII Tiras (No. 46H)

In Genesis 10:2 are listed the seven sons of Japheth, the youngest or last-recorded being Tiras or Theiras (LXX).

Genesis 10:1-2 These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood. ² The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. (RSV)

This list is repeated in 1Chronicles 1:5, after which there is no further mention made of Tiras in the Scriptures. Neither does the Bible name any of the sons or grandsons of Tiras; however, four of them are given in the apocryphal Book of Jasher as Benib, Gera, Lupirion and Gilak (Ch. 7, 9).

An appropriate starting point in the search for the descendants of Tiras/Thiras would be the connection made by Josephus between them and the Thracians.

Thiras also called those whom he ruled over Thirasians; but the Greeks changed the name into Thracians (Ant. of Jews, I, 6).

Asia Minor or Anatolia (modern Turkey) is the region in which the Thracian ancestors first appear, as might be expected with a westward expansion out of Urartu and Armenia, where Noah and his sons were found after the Flood.

Tiras is apparently of foreign derivation and means desire, and Troas, Troia, Troy, Taurus, Turkey, Tyrrhena, Tuscan, and Etruscan are all said to derive from this name. One example of this may be the Taurus Mountains located in south-central Anatolia, which, if actually named after the patriarch, would tend to indicate that the descendants of Tiras passed that way on their meandering journey westwards to the Propontis (Sea of Marmara) and to where the ancient city of Troy was to be built. Taurus may well be derived from Tiras but its linguistic connection to Troy is less sure.

The Trojans were referred to by the Mediterranean Greeks in the Iliad as Keltoi or Celts. The remnant of the Trojans that left Troy and came to Britain via Rome and Africa were said to be sons of Gomer and who hold themselves to be sons of Gomer to this day. These are the ancient Britons, the Celts that today have their most concentrated remnant in Wales. Their history was a written by Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth who both confirm that aspect. The Abbe MacGeoghegan in the History of Ireland confirms that the ancestors of Western Europe were Gomerites, while discussing the origin of the Milesians from Magog.

The Celts are spread all over Western Europe and are mostly R1b Japhethites. This aspect is discussed in the paper Sons of Japheth Part II: Gomer (No. 46B). Thus we must assume that the Trojans were comprised of at least two tribal groups – both Gomer and Tiras – and the nations that fought at Troy were many with many languages as the Iliad says.

The patronymic Trias also seems to have been preserved in the river Tyras (Herodotus Histories, IV, 89), the former name of the Dniester (and the settlement at its mouth), which empties into the Euxine or Black Sea. Another source, however, states that Tyras derives from the Scythian word tûra (meaning rapid).

The area traditionally occupied by the Thracians is known today as the Balkan Peninsula, although some Thracian tribes seemingly pushed as far north as the Carpathian Mountains and the Dniester river, into the region later known to the Romans as Dacia. Thrace was bounded on the west by the Dinaric Alps, by the mountains of continental Greece in the south, and by the Black Sea to the east -- the area roughly encompassed by modern Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, eastern Greece and western Turkey. This was the western area of the Parthian Empire in the Roman period.

The Thracians thereby came to occupy the vital access points between Europe and Anatolia, the chief of these being the long Dardanelles strait to the north of Troy, and the Bosphorus, where Europe and Asia Minor are less than half a mile (700m) apart at its narrowest point.

There was also a strong Thracian connection with the Greeks, descendants of another son of Japheth (see the paper Sons of Japheth Part V: Javan (No. 46E)). The Sons of Javan were the Ionian Greeks and are genetically distinct from the mainland Greeks, as we now know. Anciently, the northern part of the Aegean Sea was referred to as the Mare Thracicum – the Thracian Sea. According to Homer, the name Thracian first appeared at the end of the second millennium BCE, and during the twelfth and eleventh centuries the Thracians settled on some Mediterranean islands before moving into Asia Minor or Anatolia. The Talmud Yov'loth 9:14 states that Tiras is identified in one ancient source with the larger Mediterranean islands. The Roman historian Strabo in Geographica refers to one of the smaller Aegean islands occupied by Tiras’ descendants.

The Sinti, a Thracian tribe, inhabit the island Lemnos; and from this fact Homer calls them Sinties (VII, Frag., 45).

The island of Samothrace (Samos in Greek) was also settled by the Thracians. There are four – or five, if counting Lesbos – major islands in the northern Aegean or Thracian Sea, namely Lemnos, Samothrace and Thasos (still part of Greece) and Imbros (now part of Turkey). However, these do not appear to be the “large islands” mentioned in Jubilees as Tiras’ inheritance.

The name Thrace, and hence Tiras, is preserved today in the easternmost province (nomos) of Greece known as Thraki.

Thracian tribes

In the 750 years from about 700 BCE until their defeat and incorporation into the Roman Empire in 46 CE, there were as many as 40 distinct tribes of Thracians numbering up to one million people. Among these were the Getae, Moesi and Odrysai of the plains; the Bessi, Bisaltai, Dii, Odomanti, Satrai and Thyni who dwelt in the mountains; and others such as the Ciconians and Triballi (see Christopher Webber, The Thracians 700BC-AD46, Osprey Publ., Oxford, 2001).

Other commentators give the number of Thracian tribes as anywhere up to 200 (M. Eliade, Prof. D. Balasa). These include the Phrygians, Mayones, Mysians, Payones, Paeonians, Halitsones, Carians, Enets, Dardans (closely related to the Trojan dynasty, and from whence comes the name Dardanelles). There were in fact two groups associated with the rule of Troy, both Tiras and Gomer. The sons of Priam were Riphathians of Gomer. The Roman historian Strabo stated there were only 22 tribes in the whole of Thrace (Geog., VII Frag., 47), and they may well have been so reduced by the time he wrote during the reign of Augustus Caesar, i.e. during the changeover from the 1st century BCE to that of CE.

In Histories, Herodotus speaks of the Crobyzian Thracians (Hist. IV, 49), the Dolonci (VI, 34), and “the Brygi, a tribe of Thracians” (VI, 45). Numerous other tribes are similarly referred to by him (e.g. Bk VII, 110). The Odrisi Thracians along the Marita river are mentioned as late as the 3^rd century BCE.

Homer’s Iliad (Bk. II) states that the Cicones, a Thracian people, fought on the Trojans’ side. Their distant cousins the Phrygians and Mysians were also allies of Troy. Mysians or Moesians were said to be a tribe of Thracians that had settled further west. The Lydians of Anatolia claimed that they had a common origin with the Mysians and Carians, who Georg Meyer says were natives of Thrace. The Scayans, another tribe of Moesians, was found in Chersonese in the Gallipoli peninsula.

According to Herodotus, the Persian king Darius, son of Hystaspes, set up twenty satrapies, the third of which included the Asiatic Thracians (Hist., III, 88-90). Thrace, including Macedonia, was the satrapy known as Skudra.

In Histories IV, 18 Darius is said to have “reduced the Thracians” on the Bosphorus on his way to entering and attempting to subjugate Europe. Herodotus calls it the “Thracian Bosphorus” (IV, 83). Xerxes’ campaigns also brought him into Thrace.

The following are the Thracian tribes through whose country he marched: the Paeti, the Ciconians, the Bistonians, the Sapaeans, the Dersaeans, the Edonians, and the Satrae. Some of these dwelt by the sea, and furnished ships to the king's fleet; while others lived in the more inland parts, and of these all the tribes which I have mentioned, except the Satrae, were forced to serve on foot.

The Satrae, so far as our knowledge goes, have never yet been brought under by any one, but continue to this day a free and unconquered people, unlike the other Thracians. They dwell amid lofty mountains clothed with forests of different trees and capped with snow, and are very valiant in fight (Hist., VII, 110-111).

During the retreat of the remainder of Xerxes’ army from Greece, a Persian named Oeobazus went eastward into Thrace, but was unfortunate enough to be captured by a tribe of Thracians who practiced human sacrifice.

Oeobazus fled into Thrace; but there the Apsinthian Thracians seized him, and offered him, after their wonted fashion, to Pleistorus, one of the gods of their country. His companions they likewise put to death, but in a different manner (Hist., IX, 119).

Celtic hordes arrived violently in Thrace in 279 BCE, burned their major city Seuthopolis, and founded their own kingdom with its capital at Tylis near Byzantium.

From these arose the Scordisci, which was a mixed Thracian, Illyrian and Celtic tribe that was conquered in a campaign by the Roman Minucius Rufus in 110-107 BCE.

Other sons of Japheth also migrated into Thrace. It is said that Phocaeans under Harpagus sailed from Ionia and established the city of Abdera in Thracian territory i.e. the Javanites.

There also appears to have been considerable reverse migration into Asia Minor/Anatolia by some Thracian peoples, as both Herodotus and Strabo record.

The Thracians … after crossing into Asia, took the name of Bithynians; before, they had been called Strymonians, while they dwelt upon the Strymon; whence, according to their own account, they had been driven out by the Mysians and Teucrians. The commander of these Asiatic Thracians was Bassaces the son of Artabanus (Hist., VII, 75).

… Briges, a tribe of Thracians; some of these crossed over into Asia and their name was changed to Phryges [Phrygians] (Strabo, Geog., Bk. VII, Fragments, 25).

This movement of the Thracians into the region later known as Bithynia occurred after the 12^th century BCE. The Bithynians apparently retained their Thracian culture, and much later they were to contribute about 60,000 men to Xerxes’ invasion force against Greece.

Phrygia was east of Troy in Anatolia. It acquired importance during the first millennium BCE when the immigrants from Thrace replaced the Hittites. The Phrygians in turn were replaced by the Lydians (descendants of Shem), although the decline of the former began with the invasions by the Cimmerians, who arrived via the Caucasus in the east. Cimmerian migration west had begun ca. 1400 BCE, but it was not until 696 BCE that they destroyed the state of Phrygia. One author makes the following assertion:

The two great migratory movements of the Cimmerians that had started from the Thracian region met in eastern Armenia. They were the north-Pontic and the south-Pontic waves. The ruling class of the Moscs, who had reached the Tiger [Tigris river] in 1070 B.C., seems to have been of Phrygian origin, whereas among the Armenians the possibility of an Asian influence is not altogether excluded. … Most of Asia Minor therefore remains Thracian. The Macedonian conquest contributed the last Thracian addition (Dragan, op. cit., p. 111).

YDNA evidence, however, does not really support this contention, as we will see elsewhere. Most of Asia Minor is not really Thracian at all but has some elements to it.

The Pontic steppe mentioned above is the region northeast of the Black Sea between the Dnieper river and the Ural mountains.

In the Iliad (III, 184), Homer claims that the Phrygians were neighbours of the Trojans. Seton Lloyd says of this:

Nor is the theory of their [the Phrygians] origin in Thrace dependent solely on the testimony of Herodotus and other Greek writers; for centuries later the same tribal divisions, and even names of localities, are to be found still in use on either side of the [Hellespont or Dardanelles] straits. Their new home was even occasionally referred to as Asiatic Thrace (Early Anatolia, Penguin Books, UK, 1956, pp. 71-72).

Herodotus stated that the Armenians were descended from Phrygians. It has even been suggested that the Armenian language is related to Thracian. The problem is that the Armenia and Georgian YDNA contains major elements of Assyrian Haplogroup G and thus cannot be mainly Thracian but at best only partly Thracian.

Getae and Dacians

In 460 BCE, Teres I founded the Odrysian kingdom in south-east Thrace. Sitalkes the Great, son of Teres, extended the Thracian territory to the Danube, where the Getae and later the Dacians were found. The Roman historian Strabo says of these people:

Now the Greeks used to suppose that the Getae were Thracians; and the Getae lived on either side the Ister, as did also the Mysi, these also being Thracians and identical with the people who are now called Moesi; from these Mysi sprang also the Mysi who now live between the Lydians and the Phrygians and Trojans. And the Phrygians themselves are Brigians, a Thracian tribe, as are also the Mygdonians, the Bebricians, the Medobithynians, the Bithynians, and the Thynians, and, I think, also the Mariandynians. These peoples, to be sure, have all utterly quitted Europe, but the Mysi have remained there (Geog., Bk. VII, 3, 2).

The Getae were the Goths, and when Strabo wrote the Goths and the Massagetae or Greater Goths were all in Asia. They invaded Europe with the Anglo-Saxons, Jutes and Lombards, Burgundians, Vandals, Suevi, Alans and the Heruli. The Goths moved into Italy and into Spain following the Vandals, Suevi and Alans. They are now in Spain and also in South and Central America and are thus mixed with Haplogroup Q Japhethites of the Amerindians, who are their close relatives.

There are Alan groups in south-east France in areas such as Alençon, etc.

George Rawlinson, translator of Herodotus’ Histories, concurred with the ancient Greek understanding when he stated that:

The Thracian tribe of the Getae seems to have grown into the great nation of the Goths, while the Dacia (or Dacini) seem to have been the ancestors of the Danes. The few Thracian words that have come down to us are decidedly teutonic. There is also a resemblance between the Thracian customs, as described by Herodotus (V, 4-8) and those which Tacitus assigns to the Germans (The Origin of Nations, Scribner, New York, 1878, p.178).

The original Danes were Norse Celts. They may well have been Tirasian Celts who moved north very early, and the later Tirasians and Gomerites followed into the area of the Danes that is now northern Germany. The predominant YDNA is R1b. R1b1c is common to groups in England and Scotland, Denmark, Shetland and Iceland and into East Germany, with many one and two-step mutations among them.

There is a probability that the assertion that the Getae/Goths were entirely Thracians is incorrect. They may have been some descendants of Magog rather than Tiras, having arrived from the eastern regions to the north of the Black Sea, i.e. to the north-east of Thrace.

The Swedish Royal Family records descent from Magog and thus has a conjoined Celtic lineage. They are both Svear and Magogite.

In his Histories, Herodotus also says that the Getae were a Thracian tribe.

The Thracians are the most powerful people in the world, except, of course, the Indians; and if they had one head, or were agreed among themselves, it is my belief that their match could not be found anywhere, and that they would very far surpass all other nations. But such union is impossible for them, and there are no means of ever bringing it about. Herein therefore consists their weakness. The Thracians bear many names in the different regions of their country, but all of them have like usages in every respect, excepting only the Getae, the Trausi, and those who dwell above the people of Creston (op. cit., V, 3).

The Getae were known to live on both sides of the Danube River between the Haemus (Balkan) Mountains and the Scythian lands, and may well have been progenitors of the Dacians. The distinction between the Getae and Dacians is given by Strabo as:

Getae, those who incline towards the Pontus and the east, and Daci, those who incline in the opposite direction towards Germany and the sources of the Ister.

The language of the Daci is the same as that of the Getae. Among the Greeks, however, the Getae are better known because the migrations they make to either side of the Ister are continuous, and because they are intermingled with the Thracians and Mysians. And also the tribe of the Triballi, likewise Thracian, has had this same experience, for it has admitted migrations into this country, because the neighbouring peoples force them to emigrate into the country of those who are weaker; that is, the Scythians and Bastarnians and Sauromatians on the far side of the river often prevail (Geog., VII, 3, 12-13).

Thus the Dacians are “towards Germany” and made up the European element until the remainder of the Teutons invaded in the second century CE.

The Roman historian Dio Cassius would say, “let us not forget that Trajan was a true-born Thracian. The fights between Trajan and Decebalus were fratricidal wars, and the Thracians were Dacians.”

In Herodotus’ Histories, we see Darius I coming against the Getae and Thracians.

Before arriving at the Ister [Danube River], the first people whom he [Darius] subdued were the Getae, who believe in their immortality. The Thracians of Salmydessus, and those who dwelt above the cities of Apollonia and Mesembria - the Scyrmiadae and Nipsaeans, as they are called - gave themselves up to Darius without a struggle; but the Getae obstinately defending themselves, were forthwith enslaved, notwithstanding that they are the noblest as well as the most just of all the Thracian tribes (IV, 93).

Herodotus was impressed by the Getae’s self-defence against the all-conquering Persians and called them the noblest and most just of the Thracian tribes. In the 1^st century BCE, Dacia gradually replaced the term Getica.

The lower Danube as far west as the river Arges was a frontier between Thracians and Scyths for over two centuries. The Muntenian and Moldavian steppe between the Danube and the Dniester, ‘a desert and interminable tract’ (Hdt V, 9-10) and ‘largely waterless Getic desert’ (Strabo, 7, 3,14) was dangerous ground. Scythian relations with the west Moldavian Thracians, who included the Agathyrsi Birsesti group, were hostile (R.F. Hoddinott, The Thracians, Thames and Hudson, UK, 1981, p. 102).

Dacia prospered under the Romans, who occupied the country after the second Dacian War of 105-106 CE. By the time the Romans left in 271 CE, the people were thoroughly Romanised and even spoke Latin, which is recognised as the root of the present Romanian language.

Trojans

The Turkeytravel website provides an overview of the city of Troy and the Trojan War.

Around 1200 BC the barbarian invasions began, coming from the northwest, across the Dardanelle. Homer's epic poem, the Iliad, tells the story of the war in which Troy was in danger (1193-84 BC), though some modern researchers think that it is more likely to have taken place about 1250 BC. The city which was immortalized by Homer stood on a hill dominating the plain, thirty kilometres south of Canakkale and at the entrance to the Dardanelle. It was built on the bank of the river Scamander, and the site is now six kilometres from the sea.

[Archaeologist have now discovered that the site of Ancient Troy was much larger than thought and the sea levels have dropped since then due to the millennial fluctuations of global warming. The war was in what we shall call the Trojan-Davidic Warm period. See the paper Global Warming and Bible Prophecy (No. 218)).]

Troy stood at the crossing of the maritime routes linking the Aegean with the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, and Anatolia with Thrace. The land route, climbing from the shores of the Aegean towards the north, also passed through Troy. For a long time this strategic location guaranteed Troy its position of a wealthy commercial centre and a powerful political city. Troy was the natural port of entry to Anatolia for anyone arriving from the west and the northwest.

Excavations carried out on the Trojan site have revealed nine different cities, flourishing from the third century BC to the fifth century AD. The town of Homer's epic would have been Troy VI or Troy VIIa. Troy VI, a prosperous town surrounded by ramparts, was destroyed around 1300 BC caused by an earthquake. The inhabitants restored the ramparts and rebuilt the town on the original site.

It is this new town, Troy VIIa, which seems to have been besieged and then laid waste by the Hellenes, after they had gained entry hidden inside the famous horse. According to the Iliad, it was the abduction of Helen by Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy that provoked the Achaeans of Sparta to assemble a fleet of twelve hundred ships for a war that lasted ten years. Helen was the wife of Menelaus, and daughter of the King of Sparta.

The Iliad recounts further that, in order to face the 'coalition of Hellenic forces under the command of Agamemnon, King of the Mycenaean's and brother of Menelaus, the Anatolian peoples too were similarly all allied into a single army. Even the Lycians, as far removed from Troy as was Greece, formed part of it. If the 'Kantians' cited by Homer are the Kantians or Hattians one can assume that the whole of Anatolia was there. The Anatolians, however, spoke different languages, whereas the Hellenes had the advantage of a common tongue, Greek. …

One wonders … where the famous chariots of the Hittites were while all Anatolia fought at Troy. It is known that at Kadesh (in 1299 BC) the Hittites had as allies the Dardanians and the Ilians, that is to say the people of Troy. Perhaps the Hittites had to face up to a more serious threat in the southeast of the country. Whatever the real circumstances, the Trojan War appears to have been an event of great significance …

http://www.turkeytravel.org/history/trojans.html

The fact of the matter is that now we know that the “Trojan Wars” represented almost two centuries of conflict in the Mediterranean. The city of Troy was much larger than thought until recently. It fell in 1054 when Eli was judge in Israel, as recorded by the Milesians, who were the invaders of Ireland in the sixth-fifth centuries BCE.

The Irish Histories tell us of Partholan, the first colonist of Ireland by way of Greece, had a grandson Nemedius who became the ancestor of the Tuatha De Danaan. The Formorians disturbed the Nemedians in Ireland and they, after suffering a serious defeat, retired into Northern Germany. From there they migrated into Norway and then Denmark where they stayed, and then migrated into Ireland with the Lia-fail or what is now the Stone of Scone.

These people were Haplogroup I (Isles) Semites which mixed with the Japhethite tribes in Britain and Scotland (see MacGeohegan and Mitchell, History of Ireland, Sadlier and Co., New York, 1868, pp. 54-55). They were harassed by the Formorians (who were potentially Tirasians) and later by a Gomerite alliance of Gallenians, Dumnonians and Belgians or Belgiae. The Formorians seem to have been an alliance of tribes from the Dumnoniae of Devon and Cornwall and the Gomerites of Belgiae as well as elements of the Tuatha De Danaan, who were themselves Nemedians (cf. MacGeoghegan, ibid.). The original Irish were thus Gomerites, Tirasians and Danites, invaded later by Magogite Milesian-Scythians.

The war with Troy actually covered two hundred years and some three levels of Troy from 1250-1054 BCE and included both Tirasian and Gomerite rulership. It was the kingdom of Wilusia, and the Hittite records tell us that Hittite armies were sent to its defence. The rock inscriptions indicate clearly that Wilusia was Troy and mark the path of the armies to Troy.

Etruscans

It has been claimed by McIver et al. that the Etruscans were descendants of those who had fled Troy following the end of the Trojan War. Dragan then contends that they are thereby descendants of Tiras, son of Japheth.

… MacIver holds that the Etruscans came in the 12^th century, when the invasion of the “men of the sea” takes place in Egypt. The Egyptian text mentions a people, the Thrusa, whom many historians actually consider to be the Etruscan people. … The Romanian comparatist Vraciu discovered astonishing similarities between the Romanian, the Albanese and the Etruscan languages, all three containing words of pre-Roman origin (J.C. Dragan, We, The Thracians, Vol. I, Nagard Publisher, Milan, 1976, pp. 116-117).

However, this theory contradicts Herodotus, who said that Lydians of Asia Minor migrated to northern Italy and changed their name to Tyrrhenians, from whom the Etruscans arose; and the Lydians were apparently descended from Lud, son of Shem.

The Lydians have very nearly the same customs as the Greeks … They claim also the invention of all the games which are common to them with the Greeks. These they declare that they invented about the time when they colonised Tyrrhenia, an event of which they give the following account. In the days of Atys, the son of Manes, there was great scarcity through the whole land of Lydia. For some time the Lydians bore the affliction patiently, but finding that it did not pass away, they set to work to devise remedies for the evil.

The lot was cast, and they who had to emigrate went down to Smyrna, and built themselves ships, in which, after they had put on board all needful stores, they sailed away in search of new homes and better sustenance. After sailing past many countries they came to Umbria, where they built cities for themselves, and fixed their residence. Their former name of Lydians they laid aside, and called themselves after the name of the king's son, who led the colony, Tyrrhenians (Hist., I, 94).

This would also account perhaps for the Semitic Haplogroup I in Italy.

And Herodotus speaks of the Thracians as being conquered peoples of the Lydian Empire (Hist. I, 28). To complicate matters further, there was also Lud, grandson of Ham and father of the Ludim, who occupied the north of Africa directly southward from Thrace.

The historical sources place the Etruscans in occupation when the sons of Aeneas of Troy colonised Rome. They are thus able to be Gomerites. Italians today are Hamitic, Semitic and Japhethitic. Jupiter worshipped in Rome is a cognate of Japheth and is simply ancestor worship of the sons of Japheth. The Atys we saw above is also most probably the origin of the worship of Attis; he was later found worshipped in Rome during the time of Christ.

Perhaps the most comprehensive work on the Etruscans is by the former Professor of Etruscology in the University of Rome, Massimo Pallottino, and entitled The Etruscans (first published in English in 1955 by Penguin Books).

Language

The Wikipedia article entitled ‘Thracian Language’ claims the following:

In 1958 Vladimir Georgiev published his paper The Genesis of the Balkan peoples that proposed that Dacian and Thracian were on two different Indo-European branches. In 1975 Ivan Duridanov publishes his Ezikyt na trakite (The Language of the Thracians) in which a number of Thracian words and lexical elements are given Balto-Slavic cognates and possible Balto-Slavic cognates.

Using Duridanov's Ezikyt na trakite essay as his basis, in the late 1980s and 1990s the linguist Harvey E. Mayer claimed that the Thracian language was a Southern Baltoidic language. There is no agreement on whether Thracian was even very close to Balto-Slavic itself, let alone agreement on which of the two it was closest to.

Though many cognates between Balto-Slavic and Thracian appear to exist, no conclusive evidence has arisen in support of a very close relation between Thracian and Balto-Slavic, and the longer Thracian inscriptions that are known (if indeed considered as Thracian) are not apparently close to Baltic, Slavic, or any other known language [1], and in fact they have not been deciphered aside from perhaps a few words.

In his book Dacians-Romans-Romanians, Dr Gabor Vekony says that:

According to Strabon, Dacians and Getae speak one language and Iustinius states that the Dacians are the descendants (suboles) of the Getae. Appianus believes Trans-Danubian Getae are known as Dacians. Yet, some of these same writers claim that Getae are connected to the Thracians. Logically, then, the Dacian language had to be identified with Thracian, or one of its variants. Unfortunately, the sources which would validate these assumptions are limited and hard to interpret (M. Corvinus Publ., 1^st English ed. 2000, p.70, emphasis added).

Vekony then refers to the work by W. Tomascheki, entitled Die Alten Thraker, written in 1883, to prove that Thracian and Dacian may have been different languages.

As the title of his work (which is still valid) tells us, he linked Dacians, on the basis of the Antique sources, to the Thracians, as did all of those who wrote about the Dacian language after him (P. Kretschmer, D. Dečev). The publication of V. Georgiev’s study in 1957 was a turning-point in this regard. Based on a voluminous research of facts, Dečev realized that, linguistically, the “Thracian” region could be divided into two larger units. He concluded that place-names ending in -dava were not characteristic of areas which were historically Thracian and place-names ending in -para, -bria are not found in areas populated by Dacians. He was also able to substantiate a sound shift in the Thracian language (similar to Germanic), while the same cannot be found in Dacian. Thracian is a so-called AMTA-language; Indo-European bh, dh, gh becam b, d, g; b, d, g became p, t, k and p, t, k became ph, th, kh. Such a sound change also exists in Frisian and in Armenian … These sound changes are not characteristic of Dacian, where b, d, g and p, t, k remained unchanged and bh, dh and gh became b, d, g. These differences are similar to those which separate Germanic from Celtic or the Italic languages. Even if Georgiev’s interpretation were to be challenged on some points, it is clear that Thracians and Dacians (also Getae and Moesians) cannot belong to the same linguistic entity. … Contrary to the beliefs held by our sources on antiquity, the Dacians’ language was distinct from the Thracians’. This we propose to illustrate … [which he does over the next 13 pages] (ibid., pp. 72-73, emphasis added).

However, this author goes on to say that: “alteration of m and b, [are] characteristic of the Thracian (and Dacian) languages” (ibid., p. 86).

Vekony’s conclusion is as follows:

It establishes, first of all, that Dacian belonged to the statem group of Indogermanic languages. In addition, there is a connection with Baltic and Slavic languages, as noted before (cf. for example dela, zila: “grass”, seba “elderberry”, etc.). Quite noticeable are connections with Albanian (ibid., p.87).

He adds that: “it is well known that a close relationship also exists between Albanian and Rumanian; in vocabulary, among others” (ibid., p. 90). Vekony later ties Dacian and Albanian together. He says that the Dacian-Albanian relationship is evident partly in language.

Traces of an Albanian, T[h]racian and Dacian sound change can be discovered in the name of the River Temes -- an -m- replacing the original -b-. In view of existing linguistic evidence we can hardly doubt that the language(s) spoken during antiquity in the region of the Southern and Eastern Carpathians must have been forerunners of Albanian and that (one of these languages) must have been Dacian. More concisely: what we call Daco-Geta languages -- for want of more complete records.

… Supplemental data also permit us to believe that the predecessor of Albanian was Dacian -- more exactly, a close relative of Dacian. …We know of only one Dacian speaking, Dacian-related ethnic group along the Lower Danube which was relocated to the Roman Empire as a national entity: the Karps. [after a successful campaign against them by Galerius in 295-7 CE] (ibid., pp. 192-194).

On page 78, Vekony makes the surprising claim that “Frisian may be considered as the forerunner of Armenian”.

Frisian is related to ancient Anglo-Saxon, and the YDNA of the Fris has proven to be the same R1b grouping as the Anglo-Saxon in England and the Saxon of Germany. They are effectively the same people among their Japhethite elements. They do, however, have significant Haplogroup I Semitic elements also. We have to now entertain the prospect that the Anglo-Saxons are Indo-German Teutonic Tirasians coupled with Hebrew Semites of the sons of Arphaxad, and perhaps even Israelites. We will test this theory further. The Parthian Empire will be dealt with in an Appendix.

There also appears to have been a linguistic connection between the Myceneans and the Thracians, as several authors have proposed. A Wikipedia article contains the following information:

… discussions pertaining to the potential ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic interrelations between proto-Thracians and proto-Greeks (i.e. Myceneans). It was believed that such interrelations had to exist since both groups have lived in the same geographic area in the past. According to Alexander Fol, the concept of "Mycenean Thrace" was first developed in 1973 in order to explain the relative cultural unity between the Thracians and the Myceneans (Best, Jan and De Vries, Nanny, Thracians and Mycenaeans, E.J. Brill Academic Publishers, Boston, MA. 1989).

An apparent connection has also been discerned between the languages of the Italic peoples and the Daco-Thracians.

According to certain historians, the Italics first lived along the middle Danube, in direct contact with the Thracians. … Considering the Italics were the neighbours of the Thracians during the formation period of the Indo-European peoples and languages, it is probable as in the case of the Italo-Celtic connections, that the Latin-Umbrian and Daco-Thracian dialects were also very close to each other. Vasile Pârvan put forward the hypothesis of this similarity, concluding that only a close linguistic relationship could explain the rapidity with which the Daco-Thracians learned to speak Latin.

Thracian civilization was a contemporary of Mycenian civilization, and of Homer’s heroes as well. … For Homer, there was no difference whatever in civilization either between the Trojans and the Greeks or between the Trojan’s allies and the Greeks. The allies, furthermore, were the Pelasgo-Thracian peoples. This equality is the most telling proof of the standard of the Thracian civilization.

… it is also important that the Pelasgo-Thracian language was not looked down upon as a barbarian one, even if the Greeks or the Trojans did not understand it (Dragan, op. cit., pp. 77, 79, 83-4).

Some authors hold that there is a great linguistic resemblance between the Thracians and the Illyrians [e.g. Jokl]; … Others however, draw a line which clearly marks the limits between the two languages [e.g. Tomaschek and Russu]. (ibid., pp. 119-120)

Notice the differentiation between the Trojan and the Pelasgo-Thracian languages. Thus we may well be dealing with Gomerites and Tirasians in an alliance regarding Troy. Remember the Europeans and the ancient British all claim descent from the Trojans, who are claimed as Riphathian Celts of Gomer (see the Sons of Japheth Part II: Gomer (No. 46B)).

Religion

The Thracians seemingly subscribed to a pantheon of gods, variously: Dionysius; a war god, either Ares or the so-called Thracian Hero; Hermes; the “Great Mother of Gods” Artemis (Bendis); and Zalmoxis. One author (Fol) says that the Horseman-Hero was considered to be the son of Artemis.

In his Histories, Herodotus lists fewer Thracian gods, but adds Pleistorus elsewhere (IX, 119):

The gods which they worship are but three, Mars [Ares], Bacchus [Dionysius], and Dian [Artemis]. Their kings, however, unlike the rest of the citizens, worship Mercury more than any other god, always swearing by his name, and declaring that they are themselves sprung from him (Hist., V, 7).

Herodotus also spoke of the ancestor worship among the Thracians that was common to many cultures in ancient times. Xenophanes of Colophon gave a brief description of the Thracian gods, probably based upon the likeness of their ancestors.

Men make gods in their own image; those of the Ethiopians are black and snub-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair (Diels-Kranz edit., B, 16, 15).

This may indicate that it was the descendants of Tiras who introduced the red-haired gene that was later to become associated predominantly with the Celts of Britain and Ireland and the Norse Celts in Scandinavia, Iceland and the Shetland Islands. This feature is evident also among the Burgundians. There is a red-haired, blue-eyed tribe among the Scythians also as we saw in the paper on the Sons of Japheth Part VI: Magog (No. 46C).

The Getae were called the most noble of the Thracian peoples, who believed in the immortality of the soul and had a distorted concept of eternal life (Hist., IV, 95).

The belief of the Getae in respect of immortality is the following. They think that they do not really die, but that when they depart this life they go to Zalmoxis, who is called also Gebeleizis by some among them. To this god every five years they send a messenger, who is chosen by lot out of the whole nation, and charged to bear him their several requests. Their mode of sending him is this. A number of them stand in order, each holding in his hand three darts; others take the man who is to be sent to Zalmoxis, and swinging him by his hands and feet, toss him into the air so that he falls upon the points of the weapons. If he is pierced and dies, they think that the god is propitious to them; but if not, they lay the fault on the messenger, who (they say) is a wicked man: and so they choose another to send away. The messages are given while the man is still alive. This same people, when it lightens and thunders, aim their arrows at the sky, uttering threats against the god; and they do not believe that there is any god but their own.

I am told by the Greeks who dwell on the shores of the Hellespont and the Pontus, that this Zalmoxis was in reality a man, that he lived at Samos, and while there was the slave of Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus. After obtaining his freedom he grew rich, and leaving Samos, returned to his own country. … but I believe Zalmoxis to have lived long before the time of Pythagoras. Whether there was ever really a man of the name, or whether Zalmoxis is nothing but a native god of the Getae, I now bid him farewell (op. cit., IV, 94-96).

In his work The Thracians, Hoddinott states that they had knowledge of a supreme God, but ancestor deification was also very important to them, as noted earlier.

The Greeks of Histria and Odessos, where Greco-Thracian relations were close, acknowledged a Thracian supreme ‘Great God’, but this Greek interpretation did not necessarily mean the Thracians worshipped one they viewed in anthropomorphic terms. The abstract and aniconic nature of the Dacian sanctuaries also argues against any such personalization. The tribal ancestor-hero-protector may have been the highest personal concept in Thracian religion, corresponding approximately to a patron saint in Christianity … As with early Christianity and Islam, what was higher could not be portrayed; we do not know how it was conceived. the Getai shooting their arrows at the sky during a thunderstorm to warn off an apparent enemy of their one god (Hdt IV, 94) suggests … a continuance of solar worship (Gocheva 1978). (Thames and Hudson, UK, 1981, p. 170.)

Thracians and Phrygians worshipped the same god Sabatsios/Sabazios, understandably so considering that the latter were apparently descended from the former. As an aside, Dragan gives one source of the crescent in Islam.

On the old Phrygian coins was engraved the god of the moon, Men, who is said to have been the source of the crescent, which at first was tied round his neck and later on became the symbol of Islam (J.C. Dragan: We, The Thracians, Vol. I, Nagard Publisher, Milan, 1976, p. 108).

While the Thracians appeared to have a pantheon of gods, the Dacians by contrast may have been monotheists. This fact alone may suggest a different ethnic background.

… Strabo (Geographica 7,3,11) reports that Dacians ate no meat and drank no wine. Iosephus Flavius (Antiqitates Judaicae XVII, 22) was apparently close to the mark when he wrote that Dacian Pileati live a life similar to the Essenes. Zamolxis means earth-god or earthly-god. He was a god who died and was resurrected and who gathered in all Dacians who died … it cannot even be excluded with certainty that they were monotheistic, as postulated by Rohde and Pârvan. This religion must have been forcibly disseminated -- as suggested by written records (Dekaineos was to have conveyed the orders of God) and by a certain object found in all places of former Dacian habitation. This is a cup, shaped as a truncated pyramid, with or without a handle. It must have been used as a lantern, a sacral object used in religious rites. ‘South of the Danube among the Getae the Zamolxis religion was known as early as the 6^thand 5^th centuries [BCE] -- it promotes belief in the immortal soul.’ (Iord. Get. XI, 69). (Dragan, ibid., p. 46)

The Getae had a rather perverse but pragmatic approach to life and death, as Herodotus records. Cannibalism was apparently practised by certain tribes of Thracians.

Now the manners and customs of the Getae, who believe in their immortality, I have already spoken of. The Trausi in all else resemble the other Thracians, but have customs at births and deaths, which I will now describe. When a child is born all its kindred sit round about it in a circle and weep for the woes it will have to undergo now that it is come into the world, making mention of every ill that falls to the lot of humankind; when, on the other hand, a man has died, they bury him with laughter and rejoicings, and say that now he is free from a host of sufferings, and enjoys the completest happiness.

Their wealthy ones are buried in the following fashion. The body is laid out for three days; and during this time they kill victims of all kinds, and feast upon them, after first bewailing the departed. Then they either burn the body or else bury it in the ground. Lastly, they raise a mound over the grave, and hold games of all sorts, wherein the single combat is awarded the highest prize. Such is the mode of burial among the Thracians (Hist., op. cit., V, 4).

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