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114-577: The exact origin of the Thracians is uncertain, but it is believed that Thracians like other Indo-European speaking groups in Europe descended from a mixture of Proto-Indo-Europeans and Early European Farmers . Around the 5th millennium BC, the inhabitants of the eastern region of the Balkans became organized in different groups of indigenous people that were later named by the ancient Greeks under

228-733: A Thracian warrior from the Maedi tribe who was enslaved as a gladiator by the Romans, led a revolt that posed a significant challenge to Roman authority, prompting a series of military campaigns against it. The aftermath of the rebellion saw the crucifixion of 6,000 surviving rebels along the Appian Way . Thracians were described as " warlike " and " barbarians " by the Greeks and Romans since they were neither Romans nor Greeks but in spite of that they were favored as excellent mercenaries. While

342-476: A Thracian woman. The ethnicity of a slave was a significant criterion for major purchasers: Ancient practice was to avoid a concentration of too many slaves of the same ethnic origin in the same place, in order to limit the risk of revolt . During the Macedonian Wars , conflict between Rome and Thrace was unavoidable. The rulers of Macedonia were weak, and Thracian tribal authority resurged. But after

456-509: A hat with red hair, which classicists believe was Thracian in origin. Other ancient writers who described the hair of the Thracians as red include Hecataeus of Miletus , Galen , Clement of Alexandria , and Julius Firmicus Maternus . Nevertheless, academic studies have concluded that people often had different physical features from those described by primary sources. Ancient authors described as red-haired several groups of people. They claimed that all Slavs had red hair , and likewise described

570-729: A mass scale. Through dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), pre-historians could calibrate radiocarbon dates to a much higher degree of accuracy. And finally, before the 1970s, parts of eastern Europe and central Asia had been off-limits to Western scholars, while non-Western archaeologists did not have access to publication in Western peer-reviewed journals. The pioneering work of Marija Gimbutas , assisted by Colin Renfrew , at least partly addressed this problem by organizing expeditions and arranging for more academic collaboration between Western and non-Western scholars. The Kurgan hypothesis , which

684-624: A mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age when the latter, around 1500 BC, mixed with indigenous peoples. According to one theory, their ancestors migrated in three waves from the northeast: the first in the Late Neolithic , forcing out the Pelasgians and Achaeans , the second in the Early Bronze Age , and the third around 1200 BC. They reached

798-594: A mythological Thracian king, was so named because of his red hair and is depicted on Greek pottery as having red hair and a red beard. Ancient Greek writers also described the Thracians as red-haired. A fragment by the Greek poet Xenophanes describes the Thracians as blue-eyed and red haired: ...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. Bacchylides described Theseus as wearing

912-588: A subculture of celibate ascetics called the " ctistae " lived in Thrace, where they served as philosophers, priests and prophets. They were held in a place of honor by the Thracians, with their lives being dedicated to the gods. During this period, contacts between the Thracians and Classical Greece intensified. After the Persians withdrew from Europe and before the expansion of the Kingdom of Macedon, Thrace

1026-491: A tree), thus avoiding his end of the bargain. According to the authors, the reconstruction of this folktale to PIE implies that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had metallurgy, which in turn "suggests a plausible context for the cultural evolution of a tale about a cunning smith who attains a superhuman level of mastery over his craft". Researchers have made many attempts to identify particular prehistoric cultures with

1140-456: A warrior, and knew no source of gain but war and theft". He also states that they practiced human sacrifice , which has been confirmed by archaeological evidence. Polyaenus and Strabo write how the Thracians broke their pacts of truce with trickery. Polyaneus testifies that the Thracians struck their weapons against each other before battle, "in the Thracian manner". Diegylis , leader of

1254-791: Is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe . Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Sea to the east, it comprises present-day southeastern Bulgaria ( Northern Thrace ), northeastern Greece ( Western Thrace ), and the European part of Turkey ( East Thrace ), roughly the Roman Province of Thrace. Lands also inhabited by ancient Thracians extended in

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1368-774: Is believed to refer to Macedonians . The three ethnicities (Saka, Macedonian, Thracian) enrolled in the Achaemenid army , as shown in the Imperial tomb reliefs of Naqsh-e Rostam , and participated in the Second Persian invasion of Greece on the Achaemenid side. When Achaemenid control over its European possessions collapsed once the Ionian Revolt started, the Thracians did not help the Greek rebels, and they instead saw Achaemenid rule as more favourable because

1482-978: Is derived from the Russian kurgan (курга́н), meaning tumulus or burial mound. According to three autosomal DNA studies, haplogroups R1b and R1a, now the most common in Europe (R1a is also very common in South Asia ) would have expanded from the Pontic steppes, along with the Indo-European languages; they also detected an autosomal component present in modern Europeans which was not present in Neolithic Europeans, which would have been introduced with paternal lineages R1b and R1a, as well as Indo-European languages. Studies which analysed ancient human remains in Ireland and Portugal suggest that R1b

1596-512: Is mentioned in Ovid 's Metamorphoses , in the episode of Philomela , Procne , and Tereus : Tereus, the King of Thrace, lusts after his sister-in-law, Philomela. He kidnaps her, holds her captive, rapes her, and cuts out her tongue. Philomela manages to get free, however. She and her sister, Procne, plot to get revenge, by killing her son Itys (by Tereus) and serving him to his father for dinner. At

1710-569: Is not shared by most linguists, because proto-languages, like all languages before modern transport and communication, occupied small geographical areas over a limited time span, and were spoken by a set of close-knit communities– a tribe in the broad sense. Researchers have put forward a great variety of proposed locations for the first speakers of Proto-Indo-European. Few of these hypotheses have survived scrutiny by academic specialists in Indo-European studies sufficiently well to be included in modern academic debate. The Kurgan (or Steppe) hypothesis

1824-512: Is part of India , Pakistan , Bangladesh , and Nepal . The historical and prehistoric possible reasons for this are the subject of on-going discussion and attention amongst population geneticists and genetic genealogists, and are considered to be of potential interest to linguists and archaeologists also. Thrace Thrace ( / θ r eɪ s / , thrayss ; Bulgarian : Тракия , romanized :  Trakiya ; Greek : Θράκη , romanized :  Thráki ; Turkish : Trakya )

1938-521: Is said to have participated in the Trojan War , which is believed to have taken place around 12th century BC. This population is referred to with the following name: "...And Hippothous led the tribes of the Pelasgi , that rage with the spear, even them that dwelt in deep-soiled Larisa ; these were led by Hippothous and Pylaeus, scion of Ares , sons twain of Pelasgian Lethus, son of Teutamus . But

2052-535: Is still used to refer to the branch that settled in Southern Asia). According to some archaeologists, PIE speakers cannot be assumed to have been a single, identifiable people or tribe, but were a group of loosely-related populations that were ancestral to the later, still partially prehistoric, Bronze Age Indo-Europeans. This is believed especially by those archaeologists who posit an original homeland of vast extent and immense time depth. However, this belief

2166-426: Is the basis for Greek and Germanic word forms which seem only to denote the ruling elite of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) society. In fact, the most accessible evidence available confirms only the existence of a common, but vague, socio-cultural designation of "nobility" associated with PIE society, such that Greek socio-cultural lexicon and Germanic proper names derived from this root remain insufficient to determine whether

2280-757: Is the most widely held theory as of 2017, depends upon linguistic and archaeological evidence, but is not universally accepted. It posits that the PIEs originated in the Pontic–Caspian steppe during the chalcolithic age. A minority of scholars prefer the Anatolian hypothesis , which posits an origin in Anatolia during the neolithic age. Other theories ( Armenian hypothesis , Out of India theory , paleolithic continuity theory , and Balkan hypothesis ) have only marginal scholarly support. In regard to terminology, in

2394-671: The Aegean (the linguistic ancestors of Mycenaean Greece ), the north of Europe ( Corded Ware culture ), the edges of Central Asia ( Yamnaya culture ), and southern Siberia ( Afanasievo culture ). Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European In

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2508-480: The Aegean islands , ending the Mycenaean civilization . They did not speak the same language. The lack of written archeological records left by Thracians suggests that the diverse topography did not make it possible for a single language to form. Ancient Greek and Roman historians agreed that the ancient Thracians were superior fighters; only their constant political fragmentation prevented them from overrunning

2622-542: The Anatolian hypothesis , in spite of the geographical proximity of the respective Urheimaten suggested, diverging from the time-frame suggested there by a full three millennia. The Anatolian hypothesis , notably advocated by Colin Renfrew from the 1980s onwards, proposes that the Indo-European languages spread peacefully into Europe from Anatolia from around 7000 BC with the Neolithic Revolution 's advance of farming ( wave of advance ). The culture of

2736-527: The Anatolian languages in its scenario. The phonological peculiarities of PIE proposed in the glottalic theory would be best preserved in the Armenian language and the Germanic languages , the former assuming the role of the dialect which remained in situ , implied to be particularly archaic in spite of its late attestation. Proto-Greek would be practically equivalent to Mycenean Greek and would date to

2850-655: The Arteskos river and then proceeded through the valley-route of the Hebros river. This was an act of conquest by Darius I, who sought to create a new satrapy in the Balkans, and had during his march sent emissaries to the Thracians found on the path of his army as well as to the many other Thracian tribes over a wide area. All these peoples of Thrace, including the Odrysae, submitted to the Achaemenid king until his army reached

2964-663: The Balkans and Anatolia . This area extended over most of the Balkans region, and the Getae north of the Danube as far as beyond the Bug and including Pannonia in the west. According to Ethnica , a geographical dictionary by Stephanus of Byzantium , Thrace —the land of the Thracians—was known as Perki (Περκη) and Aria (Αρια) before being named Thrace by the Greeks, presumably due to

3078-512: The Battle of Pydna in 168 BC, Roman authority over Macedonia seemed inevitable, and the governance of Thrace passed to Rome. Initially, Thracians and Macedonians revolted against Roman rule. For example, the revolt of Andriscus , in 149 BC, drew the bulk of its support from Thrace. Incursions by local tribes into Macedonia continued for many years, though a few tribes, such as the Deneletae and

3192-698: The Bulgarian and Greek population are Orthodox Christians , while most of the Turkish inhabitants of Thrace are Sunni Muslims . Ancient Greek mythology provides the Thracians with a mythical ancestor Thrax , the son of the war-god Ares , who was said to reside in Thrace. The Thracians appear in Homer 's Iliad as Trojan allies, led by Acamas and Peiros . Later in the Iliad , Rhesus , another Thracian king, makes an appearance. Cisseus , father-in-law to

3306-727: The Caeni , was considered one of the most bloodthirsty chieftains by Diodorus Siculus . An Athenian club for lawless youths was named after the thracian tribe Triballi which might be the origin of the word tribe . According to ancient Roman sources, the Dii were responsible for the worst atrocities in the Peloponnesian War , killing every living thing, including children and dogs in Tanagra and Mycalessos . The Dii would impale Roman heads on their spears and rhomphaias such as in

3420-711: The Greek War of Independence . With the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Northern Thrace was incorporated into the semi-autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia , which united with Bulgaria in 1885. The rest of Thrace was divided among Bulgaria , Turkey and Greece at the beginning of the 20th century, following the Balkan Wars , World War I and the Greco-Turkish War . In Summer 1934, up to 10,000 Jews were maltreated, bereaved, and then forced to quit

3534-834: The Hellenes "). At some point in the 7th century BC, a portion of the Thracian Treres tribe migrated across the Thracian Bosporus and invaded Anatolia . In 637 BC, the Treres under their king Kobos ( Ancient Greek : Κώβος Kṓbos ; Latin : Cobus ), in alliance with the Cimmerians and the Lycians , attacked the kingdom of Lydia during the seventh year of the reign of the Lydian king Ardys . They defeated

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3648-609: The Hellespont which abuts Thrace, during the invasion of the Persian Empire itself. The Thracians recorded no collective name for themselves; terms such as Thrace and Thracians were assigned by the Greeks. Divided into separate tribes, the Thracians did not form any lasting political organizations until the founding of the Odrysian state in the 4th century BC. Like Illyrians , the locally ruled Thracian tribes of

3762-534: The Kallinikos skirmish at 171 BC. Strabo treated the Thracians as barbarians, and held that they spoke the same language as the Getae . Some Roman authors noted that even after the introduction of Latin they still kept their "barbarous" ways. Herodotus writes that "the thracians sell their children and let their maidens commerce with whatever men they please". The accuracy and impartiality of these descriptions have been called into question in modern times, given

3876-585: The Late Neolithic period (6,400–3,500 BC). Mainstream scholars place them in the Pontic–Caspian steppe across Eurasia (this steppe extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania , through Moldova , and southern and eastern Ukraine , through the Northern Caucasus of southern Russia , and into the Lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan , adjacent to the Kazakh steppe to

3990-527: The Lydians and captured the capital city of Lydia, Sardis , except for its citadel, and Ardys might have been killed in this attack. Ardys's son and successor, Sadyattes , might possibly also have been killed in another Cimmerian attack on Lydia. Soon after 635 BC, with Assyrian approval the Scythians under Madyes entered Anatolia. In alliance with Sadyattes's son, the Lydian king Alyattes , Madyes expelled

4104-659: The Scythians as red haired. According to Beth Cohen, Thracians had "the same dark hair and the same facial features as the Ancient Greeks ." However, Aris N. Poulianos states that Thracians, like modern Bulgarians , belonged mainly to the Aegean anthropological type. The earliest known mention of Thracians is in the second song of Homer's Iliad , where the population inhabiting the Thracian Chersonesus

4218-544: The Thracians , a region which "had no definite boundaries" and to which other regions (like Macedonia and even Scythia ) were added. In one ancient Greek source, the very Earth is divided into "Asia, Libya, Europa and Thracia". As the Greeks gained knowledge of world geography, "Thrace" came to designate the area bordered by the Danube on the north, by the Euxine Sea (Black Sea) on the east, by northern Macedonia in

4332-503: The northern Caucasus of southern Russia , and into the lower Volga region of western Kazakhstan ), expanded into the area through several waves of migration during the 3rd millennium BCE, coinciding with the taming of the horse . Leaving archaeological signs of their presence (see Corded Ware culture ), they subjugated the supposedly peaceful, egalitarian, and matrilinear European neolithic farmers of Gimbutas' Old Europe . A modified form of this theory, by J. P. Mallory , which dates

4446-589: The 17th century BC, closely associating Greek migration to Greece with the Indo-Aryan migration to India at about the same time (viz., Indo-European expansion at the transition to the Late Bronze Age , including the possibility of Indo-European Kassites ). The Armenian hypothesis argues for the latest possible date of Proto-Indo-European ( sans Anatolian), a full millennium later than the mainstream Kurgan hypothesis . In this, it figures as an opposite to

4560-563: The 19th and early 20th centuries, the term Aryan was used to refer to the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their descendants. However, Aryan more properly applies to the Indo-Iranians , the Indo-European branch that settled parts of the Middle East and South Asia, as only Indic and Iranian languages explicitly affirm the term as a self-designation referring to the entirety of their people, whereas the same Proto-Indo-European root (*aryo-)

4674-412: The 1st century AD. It consisted mainly of present-day Bulgaria , spreading to parts of Southeastern Romania ( Northern Dobruja ), parts of Northern Greece and parts of modern-day European Turkey . By the 5th century BC, the Thracian population was large enough that Herodotus called them the second-most numerous people in the part of the world known by him (after the Indians ), and potentially

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4788-432: The 4th century BC made the Odrysian kingdom extinct for several years. After the kingdom was reestablished, it was a vassal state of Macedon for several decades under generals such as Lysimachus of the Diadochi . In 336 BC, Alexander the Great began recruiting thracian cavalry and javelin men in his army, who accompnied him on his continuous conquest to expand the borders of the Macedonian Empire . The strength of

4902-447: The Archaic period through the Greek colonisation and was completed by the end of Roman antiquity. As regards the competition between the Greek and Latin language, the very high rate of Greek inscriptions in Thrace extending south of Haemus Mountains proves the complete language Hellenization of this region. The boundaries between the Greek and Latin speaking Thrace are placed just above the northern foothills of Haemus Mountains. During

5016-602: The Bessi, willingly allied with Rome . After the Third Macedonian War , Thrace acknowledged Roman authority. The client state of Thracia comprised several tribes. Proto-Indo-Europeans The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family . Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics . The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during

5130-475: The Black Sea, and with the central Thracian plain , which gave this region an important strategic value. Persian sources describe the province as being populated by three groups: the Saka Paradraya ("Saka beyond the sea", the Persian term for all Scythian peoples to the north of the Caspian and Black Seas ); the Skudra themselves (most likely the Thracian tribes), and Yauna Takabara . The latter term, which translates as " Ionians with shield-like hats",

5244-519: The Danube, he crossed the river and campaigned against the Scythians , after which he returned to Anatolia through Thrace and left a large army in Europe under the command of his general Megabazus . Following Darius I's orders to create a new satrapy for the Achaemenid Empire in the Balkans, Megabazus forced the Greek cities who had refused to submit to the Achaemenid Empire, starting with Perinthus , after which led military campaigns throughout Thrace to impose Achaemenid rule over every city and tribe in

5358-426: The Devil , can be reconstructed to the Proto-Indo-European period. This story, found in contemporary Indo-European folktales from Scandinavia to India, describes a blacksmith who offers his soul to a malevolent being (commonly a devil in modern versions of the tale) in exchange for the ability to weld any kind of materials together. The blacksmith then uses his new ability to stick the devil to an immovable object (often

5472-420: The Greeks. In Greek mythology , Thrax (his name simply the quintessential Thracian) was regarded as one of the reputed sons of the god Ares . In the Alcestis , Euripides mentions that one of the names of Ares himself was "Thrax". Since Ares was regarded as the patron of Thrace his golden or gilded shield was kept in his temple at Bistonia in Thrace . The origins of the Thracians remain obscure due to

5586-410: The Hellespont with a large fleet and army, re-subjugated Thrace without any effort and made Macedonia full part of the satrapy of Skudra . Mardonius was however attacked at night by the Bryges in the area of Lake Doiran and modern-day Valandovo , but he was able to defeat and submit them as well. Herodotus's list of tribes who provided the Achaemenid army with soldiers included Thracians from both

5700-403: The Indo-Europeans as inferred by linguistic reconstruction raises difficulties for this theory, since early neolithic cultures lacked the horse, the wheel, and metal – terms for all of which are securely reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Renfrew dismisses this argument, comparing such reconstructions to a theory that the presence of the word " café " in all modern Romance languages implies that

5814-877: The Moesians is that they practiced vegetarianism, feeding themselves on honey, milk, and cheese. Thracians were regarded by ancient Greeks and Romans as warlike, ferocious, bloodthirsty, and barbarian. Plato in his Republic groups them with the Scythians , calling them extravagant and high spirited; and in his Laws portrays them as a warlike nation, grouping them with Celts , Persians , Scythians , Iberians and Carthaginians . Polybius wrote of Cotys's sober and gentle character being unlike that of most Thracians. Tacitus in his Annals writes of them being wild, savage and impatient, disobedient even to their own kings. The Thracians have been said to have "tattooed their bodies, obtained their wives by purchase, and often sold their children". The French historian Victor Duruy further notes that they "considered husbandry unworthy of

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5928-426: The Odrysian kingdom lost independence to Macedon , becoming incorporated into the empire, but it regained independence following Alexander the Great 's death. The Thracians faced conquest by the Romans in the mid 2nd century BC under whom they faced internal strife. They composed major parts of rebellions against the Romans along with the Macedonians until the Third Macedonian War . Beginning in 73 BC, Spartacus ,

6042-411: The Proto-Indo-European-speaking peoples, but all of such theories remain speculative. The scholars of the 1800s who first tackled the question of the Indo-Europeans' original homeland (also called Urheimat , from German ), had essentially only linguistic evidence. They attempted a rough localization by reconstructing the names of plants and animals (importantly the beech and the salmon ) as well as

6156-432: The Roman citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. During the same period (in the 1st-2nd century AD), a remarkable presence of Thracians is testified by the inscriptions outside the borders (extra fines) both in the Greek territory and in all the Roman provinces, especially in the provinces of Eastern Roman Empire. By the mid-5th century, as the Western Roman Empire began to crumble, Thracia fell from

6270-453: The Romans", which was the name traditionally given by Turkic societies to the Byzantine Empire and Orthodox Christians . In Greek mythology, Thrace is named after the heroine and sorceress Thrace , who was the daughter of Oceanus and Parthenope, and sister of Europa . The historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. The ancient Greeks employed the term "Thrace" to refer to all of the territory which lay north of Thessaly inhabited by

6384-541: The Romans, Thrace also lost its independence and became tributary to Rome. Towards the end of the 1st century BC Thrace lost its status as a client kingdom as the Romans began to directly appoint their kings. This situation lasted until 46 AD, when the Romans finally turned Thrace into a Roman province (Romana provincia Thracia). During the Roman domination, within the geographical borders of ancient Thrace, there were two separate Roman provinces, namely Thrace ("provincia Thracia") and Lower Moesia ("Moesia inferior"). Later, in

6498-483: The Thracian (northern) side of the Hellespont, which formed part of the contingent led by Asius . Ancient Thrace was home to numerous other tribes, such as the Edones , Bisaltae , Cicones , and Bistones in addition to the tribe that Homer specifically calls the "Thracians". Greek mythology is replete with Thracian kings, including Diomedes , Tereus , Lycurgus , Phineus , Tegyrius , Eumolpus , Polymnestor , Poltys , and Oeagrus (father of Orpheus ). Thrace

6612-417: The Thracians Acamas led and Peirous , the warrior, even all them that the strong stream of the Hellespont encloseth." The first Greek colonies along the Thracian coasts (first the Aegean , then the Marmara and Black Seas ) were founded in the 8th century BC. Thracians and Greeks lived side-by-side. Ancient sources record a Thracian presence on the Aegean islands and in Hellas (the broader "land of

6726-399: The Thracians are described as allies of the Trojans in the Trojan War against the Ancient Greeks. The ethnonym Thracian comes from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ ( Thrāix ; plural Θρᾷκες, Thrāikes ) or Θρᾴκιος ( Thrāikios ; Ionic : Θρηίκιος, Thrēikios ), and the toponym Thrace comes from Θρᾴκη ( Thrāikē ; Ionic: Θρῄκη, Thrēikē ). These forms are all exonyms as applied by

6840-402: The Thracians co-operating with the Persians by sending supplies and military reinforcements down the Hebrus river route, Achaemenid authority in central Thrace lasted until around 465 BC, and the governor Mascames managed to resist many Greek attacks in Doriscus until then. Around this time, Teres I , the king of the Odrysae tribe, in whose territory the Hebrus flowed, was starting to organise

6954-399: The Thracians did not manage to form a lasting political organization until the Odrysian state was founded in the 5th century BC. In the 1st century BC, during King Burebista 's rule, emerged the powerful state of Dacia . Currently, there are about 200 identified Thracian tribes . The most prominent tribe, the Moesi achieved significant importance during Roman rule. What's notable about

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7068-485: The Thracians were perceived as unsophisticated by the Romans and Greeks, their culture was reportedly noted for its sophisticated poetry and music . Since the 19th century-early 20th century, Bulgaria and Romania have used Archaeology to learn more about Thracian culture and way of life. Thracians followed a polytheistic religion with monotheistic elements. One of their customs was tattooing , common among both men and women. The Thracians culturally interacted with

7182-401: The Thracians were uncivilized and remained largely disunited, until the establishment of their first permanent state the Odrysian kingdom in the 5th century BC. The Thracian kingdom faced subjugation by the Achaemenid Empire around the same time. After the Persians were defeated by the Greeks in the Persian Wars , the Thracians experienced a short period of peace. In the late 4th century BC

7296-494: The Treres from Asia Minor and defeated the Cimmerians so that they no longer constituted a threat again, following which the Scythians extended their domination to Central Anatolia until they were themselves expelled by the Medes from Western Asia in the 600s BC. In the 6th century BC the Persian Achaemenid Empire conquered Thrace, starting in 513 BC, when the Achaemenid king Darius I amassed an army and marched from Achaemenid-ruled Anatolia into Thrace, and from there he crossed

7410-422: The Trojan elder Antenor , is also given as a Thracian king. Homeric Thrace was vaguely defined, and stretched from the River Axios in the west to the Hellespont and Black Sea in the east. The Catalogue of Ships mentions three separate contingents from Thrace: Thracians led by Acamas and Peiros, from Aenus ; Cicones led by Euphemus , from southern Thrace, near Ismaros ; and from the city of Sestus , on

7524-411: The absence of written historical records before they made contact with the Greeks . Evidence of proto-Thracians in the prehistoric period depends on artifacts of material culture . Leo Klejn identifies proto-Thracians with the multi-cordoned ware culture that was pushed away from Ukraine by the advancing timber grave culture or Srubnaya. It is generally proposed that a Thracian people developed from

7638-470: The affiliation of the Thracians with the god Ares and Perki is the reflexive name of the god Ares as *Perkʷūnos. Thucydides mentions about a period in the past, from his point of view, when Thracians had inhabited the region of Phocis , also known as the location of Delphi . He dates it to the lifetime of Tereus – mythological Thracian king and son of the god Ares . Due to the lack of historical records that predate Classical Greece it's presumed that

7752-434: The ancient Romans are the ancestors of the French, the Romanians, and the Brazilians. The Indo-Europeans were a people in the sense of a linguistic community. We should probably think of them as a loose network of clans and tribes, inhabiting a coherent territory of limited size." While 'Proto-Indo-Europeans' is used in scholarship to designate the group of speakers associated with the reconstructed proto-language and culture,

7866-421: The ancient Romans had cafés too. Another argument, made by proponents of the steppe Urheimat (such as David Anthony) against Renfrew, points to the fact that ancient Anatolia is known to have been inhabited in the 2nd millennium BC by non-Indo-European-speaking peoples, namely the Hattians (perhaps North Caucasian -speaking), the Chalybes (language unknown), and the Hurrians ( Hurro-Urartian ). Following

7980-461: The area suffered a Mongol raid from the Golden Horde , led by Nogai Khan , and between 1305 and 1307 was raided by the Catalan company . In 1352, the Ottoman Turks conducted their first incursion into the region subduing it completely within a matter of two decades and ruled it for five centuries in general peace. In 1821, several parts of Thrace, such as Lavara , Maroneia , Sozopolis , Aenos , Callipolis , and Samothraki rebelled during

8094-412: The area. With the help of Thracian guides, Megabazus was able to conquer Paeonia up to but not including the area of Lake Prasias, and he gave the lands of the Paeonians inhabiting these regions up to the Lake Prasias to Thracians loyal to the Achaemenid Empire. The last endeavours of Megabazus included his the conquest of the area between the Strymon and Axius rivers, and at the end of his campaign,

8208-600: The authority of Rome and into the hands of Germanic tribal rulers. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Thracia turned into a battleground territory for the better part of the next 1,000 years. The surviving eastern portion of the Roman Empire in the Balkans, later known as the Byzantine Empire , retained control over Thrace until the 7th century when the northern half of the entire region

8322-610: The coast and from the central Thracian plain, attesting that Mardonius's campaign had reconquered all the Thracian areas which were under Achaemenid rule before the Ionian Revolt. When the Greeks defeated a second invasion attempt by the Persian Empire in 479 BC, they started attacking the satrapy of Skudra , which was resisted by both the Thracians and the Persian forces. The Thracians kept on sending supplies to

8436-473: The concept was limited to the designation of an exclusive, socio-political elite, or whether it could possibly have been applied in the most inclusive sense to an inherent and ancestral "noble" quality which allegedly characterized all ethnic members of PIE society. Only the latter could have served as a true and universal self-designation for the Proto-Indo-European people. By the early 1900s,

8550-408: The culture and technology (a bronze-age culture that was centered upon animal husbandry and having domesticated the horse ). The scholarly opinions became basically divided between a European hypothesis, which positted a migration from Europe to Asia, and an Asian hypothesis, which positted that the migration took place in the opposite direction. In the early 1900s, the question became associated with

8664-549: The east, both forming part of the larger Eurasian Steppe ). Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the Middle Neolithic period (5500 to 4500 BC) or even the Early Neolithic period (7500 to 5500 BC) and suggest alternative origin hypotheses . By the early second millennium BC, descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had reached far and wide across Eurasia, including Anatolia ( Hittites ),

8778-403: The end of the 3rd century BC. From Thrace, three Celtic tribes advanced into Anatolia and established the kingdom of Galatia . In western parts of Moesia , Celts ( Scordisci ) and Thracians lived alongside each other, as evident from the archaeological findings of pits and treasures, spanning from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century BC. Slave raids were a specific form of banditry that

8892-492: The end of the myth, all three turn into birds – Procne into a swallow , Philomela into a nightingale , and Tereus into a hoopoe . The city of Dicaea in Thrace was named after the son of Poseidon , Dicaeus . Indigenous Thracians were divided into numerous tribes. The first to take greater control of Thrace, in part or whole, were the Achaemenian Persians in the late 6th century BC . The region

9006-482: The expansion of a supposed " aryan race ", a now-discredited theory that was promoted during the expansion of European empires and the rise of " scientific racism ". The question remains contentious within some flavours of ethnic nationalism (see also Indigenous Aryans ). A series of major advances occurred in the 1970s due to the convergence of several factors. First, the radiocarbon dating method (invented in 1949) had become sufficiently inexpensive to be applied on

9120-531: The governor of Eion when the Greeks besieged it. When the city fell to the Greeks in 475 BC, Cimon gave its land to Athens for colonisation. Although Athens was now in control of the Aegean Sea and the Hellespont following the defeat of the Persian invasion, the Persians were still able to control the southern coast of Thrace from a base in central Thrace and with the support of the Thracians. Thanks to

9234-450: The imperial period many Thracians – particularly members of the local aristocracy of the cities – had been granted the right of the Roman citizenship (civitas Romana) with all its privileges. Epigraphic evidence show a large increase in such naturalizations in the times of Trajan and Hadrian, while in 212 AD the emperor Caracalla granted, with his well-known decree ( constitutio Antoniniana ),

9348-608: The king of Macedonia , Amyntas I , accepted to become a vassal of the Achaemenid Empire. Within the satrapy itself, the Achaemenid king Darius granted to the tyrant Histiaeus of Miletus the district of Myrcinus on the Strymon's east bank until Megabazus persuaded him to recall Histiaeus after he returned to Asia Minor, after which the Thracian tribe of the Edoni retook control of Myrcinus. The new satrapy, once created,

9462-626: The lands around the northeastern Mediterranean . Although these historians characterized the Thracians as "primitive" partly because they lived in simple, open villages, the Thracians in fact had a fairly advanced culture that was especially noted for its poetry and music. Their soldiers were valued as mercenaries, particularly by the Macedonians and Romans . Thracians inhabited parts of the ancient provinces of Thrace , Moesia , Macedonia , Beotia , Attica , Dacia , Scythia Minor , Sarmatia , Bithynia , Mysia , Pannonia , and other regions of

9576-461: The latter had treated the Thracians with favour and even given them more land, and also because they realised that Achaemenid rule was a bulwark against Greek expansion and Scythian attacks. During the revolt, Aristagoras of Miletus captured Myrcinus from the Edones and died trying to attack another Thracian city. Once the Ionian Revolt had been fully quelled, the Achaemenid general Mardonius crossed

9690-493: The migrations to an earlier time (to around 3500 BCE), and puts less insistence upon their violent or quasi-military nature, remains the most widely accepted theory of the Proto-Indo-European expansion. The Armenian hypothesis , based on the glottalic theory , suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 4th millennium BC in the Armenian Highland . This Indo-Hittite model does not include

9804-629: The modern geographical region. In its early period, the Roman province of Thrace was of this extent, but after the administrative reforms of the late 3rd century, Thracia's much reduced territory became the six small provinces which constituted the Diocese of Thrace . The medieval Byzantine theme of Thrace contained only what today is East Thrace . The largest cities of Thrace are: Istanbul , Plovdiv , Çorlu , Tekirdağ , Burgas , Edirne , Stara Zagora , Sliven , Yambol , Haskovo , Komotini , Alexandroupoli , Xanthi , and Kırklareli . Most of

9918-412: The most powerful, if not for their lack of unity. The Thracians in classical times were broken up into a large number of groups and tribes, though a number of powerful Thracian states were organized, the most important being the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace, and also the short lived Dacian kingdom of Burebista . The peltast is a type of soldier of this period that originated in Thrace. At this time,

10032-573: The mountainous regions maintained a warrior tradition, while the tribes based in the plains were purportedly more peaceable. Recently discovered funeral mounds in Bulgaria suggest that Thracian kings did rule regions of Thrace with distinct Thracian national identity. During this period, a subculture of celibate ascetics called the Ctistae lived in Thrace, where they served as philosophers, priests, and prophets. Sections of Thrace particularly in

10146-452: The north to modern-day Northern Bulgaria and Romania and to the west into Macedonia . The word Thrace , from ancient Greek Thrake (Θρᾴκη), referred originally to the Thracians (ancient Greek Thrakes Θρᾷκες), an ancient people inhabiting Southeast Europe. The name Europe (ancient Greek Εὐρώπη), also at first referred to this region, before that term expanded to include its modern sense . The region could have been named after

10260-451: The peoples surrounding them – Greeks , Persians , Scythians and Celts Thracians spoke the now extinct Thracian language and shared a common culture. The last reported use of a Thracian language was by monks in the 6th century AD. The scientific study of the Thracians is known as Thracology . The first historical record of the ethnonym Thracian is found in the Iliad , where

10374-497: The principal river there, Hebros , possibly from the Indo-European arg "white river" (the opposite of Vardar , meaning "black river"), According to an alternative theory, Hebros means "goat" in Thracian . According to Stephanus of Byzantium , long before the ancient Greeks started referring to the region as Thrace , it was known as Aria (Αρια) and Perki (Περκη). In Turkey, it is commonly referred to as Rumeli , "Land of

10488-540: The property of the mutilators of the Hermai mentions 32 slaves whose origins have been ascertained: 13 came from Thrace , 7 from Caria , and the others came from Cappadocia , Scythia , Phrygia , Lydia , Syria , Ilyria , Macedon , and Peloponnese . The names given to slaves in the comedies often had a geographical link, thus Thratta, used by Aristophanes in The Wasps , The Acharnians , and Peace , simply meant

10602-461: The publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew subsequently acknowledged the important role of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic–Caspian steppe towards Northwestern Europe , noting that the DNA evidence from ancient skeletons "had completely rejuvenated Maria Gimbutas' kurgan hypothesis." Archaeogenetics has allowed

10716-596: The rise of his kingdom into a powerful state. With the end of Achaemenid power in the Balkans, the Thracian Odrysian kingdom , the Kingdom of Macedonia , and the Athenian thalassocracy filled the ensuing power vacuum and formed their own spheres of influence in the area. The Odrysian Kingdom was a state union of over 40 Thracian tribes and 22 kingdoms that existed between the 5th century BC and

10830-509: The satrapy consisted of the Axius river and the Belasica - Pirin - Rila mountain ranges till the site of modern-day Kostenets . The importance of this satrapy rested in that it contained the Hebros river, where a route in the river valley connected the permanent Persian settlement of Doriscus with the Aegean coast, as well as with the port-cities of Apollonia , Mesembria and Odessos on

10944-579: The sea and included the Bosporus , the Propontis , and the Hellespont proper and its approaches. Otanes then proceeded to capture Byzantium , Chalcedon , Antandrus , Lamponeia , Imbros , and Lemnos for the Achaemenid Empire. The area included within the satrapy of Skudra included both the Aegean coast of Thrace, as well as its Pontic coast till the Danube. In the interior, the Western border of

11058-623: The seeming embellishments in Herodotus's histories, for one. Archaeologists have attempted to piece together a fuller understanding of Thracian culture through the study of their artifacts. Several Thracian graves or tombstones have the name Rufus inscribed on them, meaning "redhead" – a common name given to people with red hair which led to associating the name with slaves when the Romans enslaved this particular group. Ancient Greek artwork often depicts Thracians as redheads. Rhesus of Thrace ,

11172-525: The single ethnonym of "Thracians". The Thracian culture emerged during the early Bronze Age , which began about 3500 BC. From it also developed the Getae , the Dacians and other regional groups of tribes. Historical and archaeological records indicate that the Thracian culture flourished in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. Writing in the 6th century BC, Xenophanes described Thracians as "blue-eyed and red-haired". According to Greek and Roman historians,

11286-470: The south started to become hellenized before the Peloponnesian War as Athenian and Ionian colonies were set up in Thrace before the war. Spartan and other Doric colonists followed them after the war. The special interest of Athens to Thrace is underlined by the numerous finds of Athenian silverware in Thracian tombs. In 168 BC, after the Third Macedonian war and the subjugation of Macedonia to

11400-653: The south, and by Illyria to the west. This largely coincided with the Thracian Odrysian kingdom , whose borders varied over time. After the Macedonian conquest, this region's former border with Macedonia was shifted from the Struma River to the Mesta River . This usage lasted until the Roman conquest. Henceforth, (classical) Thrace referred only to the tract of land largely covering the same extent of space as

11514-414: The term "aryan" had come to be widely used in a racial sense, in which it referred to a hypothesized white, blond, and blue-eyed superior race. The dictator Adolf Hitler called this race the " master race " ( Herrenrasse ), and, in its name, led massive pogroms in Europe. Subsequently, the term Aryan as a general term for Indo-Europeans has been largely abandoned by scholars (though the term Indo-Aryan

11628-543: The term 'Indo-Europeans' may refer to any historical people that speak an Indo-European language. Using linguistic reconstruction from old Indo-European languages such as Latin and Sanskrit , hypothetical features of the Proto-Indo-European language are deduced. Assuming that these linguistic features reflect culture and environment of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the following cultural and environmental traits are widely proposed: A 2016 phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European folktales posits that one folktale, The Smith and

11742-455: The territory of Thracian tribe of the Getae who lived just south of the Danube river and who in vain attempted to resist the Achaemenid conquest. After the resistance of the Getae was defeated and they were forced to provide the Achaemenid army with soldiers, all the Thracian tribes between the Aegean Sea and the Danube river had been subjected by the Achaemenid Empire. Once Darius had reached

11856-572: The thracian cavalry quickly grew from 150 men, to 1000 men by the time Alexander advanced into Egypt , and numbered 1600 when he reached the persian city of Susa . The thracian infantry was under the command of the Odrysian prince Sitalces II who led them in the siege of Telmissus and in the battles of Issus and Gaugamela . In 279 BC, Celtic Gauls advanced into Macedonia , southern Greece and Thrace . They were soon forced out of Macedonia and southern Greece, but they remained in Thrace until

11970-621: The times of Diocletian, the two provinces were joined and formed the so-called "Dioecesis Thracia". The establishment of Roman colonies and mostly several Greek cities, as was Nicopolis, Topeiros, Traianoupolis, Plotinoupolis, and Hadrianoupolis resulted from the Roman Empire's urbanization. The Roman provincial policy in Thrace favored mainly not the Romanization but the Hellenization of the country, which had started as early as

12084-498: The use of genetic analysis to trace migration patterns. The Kurgan hypothesis or steppe theory is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term

12198-447: The words of philologist Martin L. West , "If there was an Indo-European language, it follows that there was a people who spoke it: not a people in the sense of a nation, for they may never have formed a political unity, and not a people in any racial sense, for they may have been as genetically mixed as any modern population defined by language. If our language is a descendant of theirs, that does not make them ‘our ancestors’, any more than

12312-466: Was divided into three regions (east, central, and west). A notable ruler of the East Thracians was Cersobleptes , who attempted to expand his authority over many of the Thracian tribes. He was eventually defeated by the Macedonians . The Thracians were typically not city-builders and their only polis was Seuthopolis . The conquest of the southern part of Thrace by Philip II of Macedon in

12426-616: Was first formulated by Otto Schrader (1883) and V. Gordon Childe (1926), and was later systematized by Marija Gimbutas from 1956 onwards. The name originates from the kurgans (burial mounds) of the Eurasian steppes. The hypothesis suggests that the Indo-Europeans, a patriarchal , patrilinear , and nomadic culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe (which is now part northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania , through Moldova , and southern and eastern Ukraine , through

12540-704: Was incorporated into the First Bulgarian Empire and the remainder was reorganized in the Thracian theme . The Empire regained the lost regions in the late 10th century until the Bulgarians regained control of the northern half at the end of the 12th century. Throughout the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century, the region was changing in the hands of the Bulgarian and the Byzantine Empire (excluding Constantinople). In 1265

12654-784: Was incorporated into their empire as the Satrapy of Skudra , after the Scythian campaign of Darius the Great . Thracian soldiers were used in Persian armies and are depicted in carvings of the Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam . Persians' presence in Thracia lasted for more than a century, ending with the conquests in the 4th century BC by Alexander the Great of Macedon , who divided the vast realm between his generals. Notably, Thracian troops are known to have accompanied Alexander when he crossed

12768-610: Was introduced in these places along with autosomal DNA from the Pontic steppes. The subclade R1a1a (R-M17 or R-M198) is most commonly associated with Indo-European speakers. Data so far collected indicate that there are two widely separated areas of high frequency, one in Eastern Europe , around Poland , Ukraine , and Russia , and the other in Southern Asia , around the Indo-Gangetic Plain , which

12882-477: Was named Skudra ( 𐎿𐎤𐎢𐎭𐎼 ), derived from Scythian the name Skuδa , which was the self-designation of the Scythians who inhabited the northern parts of the satrapy. Once Megabazus had returned to Asia Minor, he was succeeded in Skudra by a governor whose name is unknown, and Darius appointed the general Otanes to oversee the administrative division of the Hellespont, which extended on both sides of

12996-586: Was the primary method employed by the ancient Greeks for gathering slaves. In regions such as Thrace and the eastern Aegean , natives, or " barbarians ", captured in these raids were the main source of slaves , rather than prisoners of war . As described by Xenophon , and Menander in Aspis , after the slaves were captured in raids, their actual enslavement took place when they were resold through slave-dealers to Athenians and other slaveowners throughout Greece . The fragmentary list of slaves confiscated from

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