User talk:Andrew Lancaster/Goths
NOTE. This is a page for constructive discussion of my drafting, and part of the user space of me, Andrew Lancaster. In order to stop a past problem of participants being discouraged, I've decided on a policy of quickly deleting or collapsing comments without warning, simply based on my judgement of which posts may become unhelpful or discouraging.
Introduction to this draft page, in case you are interested
[edit]Pinging current talk page participants on the Goths page. Berig, Nishidani, Obenritter, Peter K Burian, Bloodofox, Ermenrich, Srnec, Carlstak, Mnemosientje, SMcCandlish, Yngvadottir, Alcaios, Pfold, North8000, Krakkos
This is the talk page of my drafting page for the Goths article, which has existed for a long time. I've started work on it again with a focus on the first sections of the article. We currently have a third RFC there which has already looked at two drafts for a new single section to replace the current Prehistory and Early History sections. Two drafts have come and gone and are appreciated, but it was unanimous that more work was needed, and explanations such as that given by Obenritter have been noted as the right way forward. From Obenritter's comment from the article talk page:
| General support but more trimming – Something more of a synopsis. Hypothetical: Origin myths and ethnic classification for the Goths remain disputed. These range from classical sources that claim the Goths migrated from Scandinavia (Jordanes' Getica)(source citation accompanied by short explanatory note), their emergence as misidentified groupings of Butones, Gutones, etc. (source citation), whether they were originally Scythians (source citation), or XXXXX. Archaeological findings and linguistic analysis also complicate the discussion as XXXXX claims that XXXX while so and so claims XXXX (source citations). |
I've also noted some problems I think are very critical. From the article talk page (my "vote" in the 3rd recent RFC).
RFCs is that Jordanes discussion should be reduced, but his influence should not be hidden. We should not place the stories of Jordanes in modern clothing. Why mention Jordanes at all if we do not mention that he is the original source of the idea that the ancestors of the Goths took part in 2 migrations? I think we must handle him first then, letting our readers know about his influence on historians. That would be the quickest way to handle him. We can quickly summarize that Jordanes is not considered reliable, but various recent scholars argue for one or both migrations being some kind of reflection of real events (but probably not a real migration). Then we can quickly mention (1) the Gutones (but less detail), (2) the archaeological evidence of Scandinavian contacts with the Vistula, and OTOH Wielbark culture (Vistula) influence on the Chernyakhov culture, which is widely considered Gothic (3) the newer thinking that instead of a migration there were smaller scale influences. (I don't think anyone wanted less of 2 and 3, but perhaps even more. These 2 points have been de-emphasized and over-simplified in some past versions. 3 currently has no home article either.) So this comment is based on what I understand the RFC responses are saying.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:50, 2 April 2021 (UTC) List of concerns with first and second proposals (Work still needed):
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first discussion
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One of the biggest problems is that the two drafts insist on ignoring that Wikipedia already has a Gutones article. Quite honestly I have no idea how we can go into a more complex drafting discussion in that RFC format, so I wanted to make sure you were all aware of this page, and I invite you to post here, and within reason to edit directly into the draft. Perhaps it will help. Please remember it is only a draft, not a proposed edit. Don't get mad at me for missing things or mistakes, just tell me (if you find this an interesting draft) what you think needs fixing.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:10, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
I don't think it is necessary to burden anyone with being me and Andrew's babysitter. I think the best way forward is for Andrew and me to begin writing drafts for the origins and early history sections of Goths. While working on our drafts we can seek community input and continuously develop them through being inspired by each others work. Ideally we could try to merge both drafts into a single whole. If that doesn't work, a third-party editor could present both drafts to the community as an RfC and ask which version that is preferable. I think this would be an efficient way to create a higher quality article. In such a scenario our arguments would be presented through the quality of our drafts. There would be no need for Andrew and me to argue over anything at talk. That would probably benefit both Andrew and me and the community as a whole. Krakkos (talk) 19:14, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
NishidaniObenritterErmenrichCarlstakSMcCandlishNorth8000KrakkosSrnec just saying:
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second discussion
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A criticism of Lead draft[edit]Not sure where to put this, Andrew Lancaster, so feel free to move it wherever you see fit. You've solicited criticisms, so to begin, the first sentence of your "drafting notes after RFCs" version is too complex, with too many subordinate clauses, effectively piling relative clause on top of relative clause. It does not compare favorably to the prose of the first paragraph in the 2 April version for readability. Also, you've placed the "prehistory of the Goths" paragraph at the end of the lede, out of chronological order; that device can be effective, but doesn't seem to work here, causing the reader (this one, anyway) to pause and backtrack mentally. Carlstak (talk) 03:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Of the three leads presented here I'd say the 2 April version is the best so far. It deals with the basics chronologically without going to much into Jordanes and other questionable details, and is the shortest and most readable. Krakkos (talk) 08:43, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Questions of a "fundamental nature"? Can you name one? We must be in completely different discussions. I spent a day in discussion with you yesterday but most of the discussions were simply about what sources say, and whether or not a certain way of summarizing them is neutral. I could summarize them in a short paragraph, because none of them should be as difficult as they are. What is so fundamental about them? I fear that you are seeing your preferred draft competition format, where discussion stops until the magic win or lose day, as a way of avoiding the sorts of discussion that are needed if we really just want a better article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:41, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
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Fresh start
[edit]Just as well; I missed the first two rounds, busy doing other stuff. I like the third draft of the lead best; it's simple, with short and uncomplicated sentence structure, and it avoids dwelling on ancient source material that's controversial at best. However, I don't think it should lose all mention of "Germanic", per the "don't bury the lede" principle. If there's some controversy about whether the Gutones were, technically, of Germanic stock (is there any haplogroup evidence from ancient DNA?), we can be quite certain they were speaking a Germanic language, and the lead should at least in passage mention that their language is called Gothic and is well-attested. I'm rather time-pressed, so that's all the feedback I have right this moment. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish: no DNA won't help at this stage, and I think it will be a long time before it can. Partly this is discussion scholars have about how they use words. I will reintroduce "Germanic", but yes it is a term some scholars avoid for the Goths these days, unless they mean "Germanic language speaking". Problems is that "Germanic" has other meanings. Of course you are correct that the Goths used an (East) Germanic language. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:16, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the input, SMcCandlish. There was once a so called Celtosceptic movement which argued that there were never any Celts in the British Isles because Roman sources never said so. There are historians who says Goths were not "Germanic" for the same reasons. For Gutonic/Gothic genetics, see Stolarek et. al (2019). I think we should avoid spending too much space on uncertain things in the lead, and we should certainly avoid making definite statements on such uncertainties. One such uncertainty is when Goths are first mentioned. Peter Heather writes in his works on the Goths, such as his 2018 entry on them in the The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, that the Goths are first attested in the 1st century AD. Other scholars argue that they were first attested in the 3rd century. I have made a fourth draft which seeks to improve the lead by avoiding such controversial uncertainties and sticking to the basics. Krakkos (talk) 09:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Krakkos thanks, but... I am concerned to avoid what happened with previous discussions on this page which clearly overloaded other editors, so
I am collapsing this, andI have to keep open the option of deleting both this and your draft. Please do keep things short on my drafting space. We've certainly used enough space on other parts of WP. I think that we all know that the problem with the term Germanic is completely different to Celtic, at least considering scholars right now, who are supposed to be our sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Krakkos thanks, but... I am concerned to avoid what happened with previous discussions on this page which clearly overloaded other editors, so
- Thanks for the input, SMcCandlish. There was once a so called Celtosceptic movement which argued that there were never any Celts in the British Isles because Roman sources never said so. There are historians who says Goths were not "Germanic" for the same reasons. For Gutonic/Gothic genetics, see Stolarek et. al (2019). I think we should avoid spending too much space on uncertain things in the lead, and we should certainly avoid making definite statements on such uncertainties. One such uncertainty is when Goths are first mentioned. Peter Heather writes in his works on the Goths, such as his 2018 entry on them in the The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, that the Goths are first attested in the 1st century AD. Other scholars argue that they were first attested in the 3rd century. I have made a fourth draft which seeks to improve the lead by avoiding such controversial uncertainties and sticking to the basics. Krakkos (talk) 09:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Andrew Lancaster and Krakkos: I've done enough reading in genetic studies of European populations by this point to know that describing people in this place or that as "Germanic" or "Celtic" or whatever, in a genetic race/ethnicity sense, is generally b.s. anyway. These really are best thought of linguistic and cultural terms. But "Germanic" is one that will certainly be expected to be here. Maybe "spoke the Germanic language Frankish" or something like that rather than an assertion like "a Germanic people who...". I agree with Krakkos's general idea of avoiding uncertainties, but we cannot always do this totally; the lead is going to be expected to provide a time-frame, even if we have to be vague, like "appeared in the West some time between the 1st and 3rd centuries", and then explain in more detail in the article body. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:44, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish: in the meantime I added "Germanic" to my draft anyway, although I feel the claim the Goths have to being Germanic is far more controversial than the Franks. I have also proposed on the article talk page that the lead proposal of Krakkos could go ahead as far as I am concerned. [1] (I mentioned a small concern about going too quick from Adrianopolis to Visigoths.) You raise an issue about naming a timeframe, and if necessary perhaps explain your preferences on the article talk page where I posted? I would prefer to say that the Goths are not seen before the 3rd century. It is acceptable to me that the Krakkos draft mentions the 3rd and 4th century without going into the earlier possibilities. I think in any case the connected question is how to make a new Origins section where this will be further discussed. That RFC is still going and I've just posted a linked to my shortest draft so far [2]. Any thoughts on that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:51, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
- "the claim the Goths have to being Germanic is far more controversial" – This is exactly what I'm getting at with focusing on language groups rather than making assertions about ethnicity. More and more, the entire idea "this group is Germanic and that one is Celtic and that one is Slavic" is turning out to be presumptive nonsense. In reality, the underlying genetics of populations over large areas of Europe have barely changed since the Neolithic, and even where and to the extent they have, it's just been an additional layer with the Neolithic haplogroups also remaining ensconced in the area to the present day. It's already a norm to write about, say, ancient Galicians as being "Celtic-speaking", not "Celtic", and it's about time that this conceptual shift happened more with regard to Germanic-speaking cultural groups, whose actual genetics may remain a mystery for some time (or even all time; depends on whether enough bones that can absolutely be ascribed to them can be found still containing viable ancient DNA). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
- Observations on some details. (It is my userspace, so I'll let myself. Maybe I'll collapse it all later.)
- I'll defend Krakkos a bit and say that so far DNA has shown a post Neolithic population change in this region - the one associated with wheels, milk, wool-use, metallurgy, haplogroup R1b and Indo-European. However, it was clearly a major thing, as shown by all those non-DNA changes I just mentioned, whereas these movements during classical time might have been a constant swirl of small movements for all we know so far. For example, not only did the Goths and Romans not seem to notice that the Goths were Germanic, but Goths are invisible archaeologically. They have the same material culture as their neighbours. If the changes are of that nature then there will need to be a lot of data before it starts making sense.
- A second observation I'd make is that this is not just a conceptual argument. Nor is it a simple confusion caused by linguistics having its own scheme of classification. Classifying the Goths as Germanic, although it has the excuse of being language-based and therefore "objective", is currently connected to a specific "hot" argument about the fall of Rome. The argument is that Rome fell mainly because of a massive surge of migrants who had been building up as part of a single long-run tendency. If, like Heather, you call Goths "Germanic", you connect them to a bigger wave, and you are implying coordination and unity, even a sort of "manifest destiny". Kulikowski on the other hand emphasizes different things. The Goths did not see themselves as Germanic, nor share a language they could understand with Germanic people in western Europe. They were actually just one of a series of different short-term hegemonic groups in a very large region which seems to have been a linguistic patchwork (which was NOT always dominated by Germanic speakers). The Romans had been manipulating the various peoples to their north for centuries, and keeping them weak. If there was a new factor, it was the non-Germanic Huns. All this matches his own argument that Rome fell as a result of its own internal issues. It is surprising that the two historians actually agree on more facts than you might expect. So in effect a classification scheme from the 19th century is being used, even though the methodology of the old model are now rejected. It is apparently being used in an artificial way, as part of a specific debate. This does give challenges on WP.
- I can think of one relevant "fact" debate, but it is a fuzzy one and I think it is something more for a spin-off article. Heather does have a couple of weak arguments that the Goths moved in relatively large numbers - though this is a fine point because he still says this would only be mainly in small groups over a long period. (Otherwise how can we explain why all the peoples in the Ukraine had the same material culture?)
- One argument is that a successful ethnic group would never recruit people from other ethnicities. In contrast, Wolfram argued that maybe the Gothic kings, in order to become successful, did exactly that. Wolfram's idea still seems quite popular. I've never seen anyone cite Heather at all on this.
- Another argument Heather uses is that if there were not large numbers, including women, the Goths would not speak a Germanic language once they arrived in the Ukraine. But he admits himself that several of the peoples who were there before the Goths were ever mentioned (Bastarnae, Peukini) seem to have been Germanic. (In fact he goes out of his way to describe this as a reconquest on behalf of the Germanic peoples, which is an example of a sort of "Germanic destiny" theme in his story that other scholars have been criticizing.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:50, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
- I liked the shape your short draft is taking Andrew (as requested on my page). Two points re above. (a) successful ethnic groups don't recruit'. The Khazar Ashina elite definitely did just that, to cite one case (b) you don't need large numbers to impress a language on another people: the Hungarians genetically are IE, but the language reflects the stamp of its conquering warrior elite.Nishidani (talk) 11:08, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- Observations on some details. (It is my userspace, so I'll let myself. Maybe I'll collapse it all later.)
- "the claim the Goths have to being Germanic is far more controversial" – This is exactly what I'm getting at with focusing on language groups rather than making assertions about ethnicity. More and more, the entire idea "this group is Germanic and that one is Celtic and that one is Slavic" is turning out to be presumptive nonsense. In reality, the underlying genetics of populations over large areas of Europe have barely changed since the Neolithic, and even where and to the extent they have, it's just been an additional layer with the Neolithic haplogroups also remaining ensconced in the area to the present day. It's already a norm to write about, say, ancient Galicians as being "Celtic-speaking", not "Celtic", and it's about time that this conceptual shift happened more with regard to Germanic-speaking cultural groups, whose actual genetics may remain a mystery for some time (or even all time; depends on whether enough bones that can absolutely be ascribed to them can be found still containing viable ancient DNA). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
- @SMcCandlish: in the meantime I added "Germanic" to my draft anyway, although I feel the claim the Goths have to being Germanic is far more controversial than the Franks. I have also proposed on the article talk page that the lead proposal of Krakkos could go ahead as far as I am concerned. [1] (I mentioned a small concern about going too quick from Adrianopolis to Visigoths.) You raise an issue about naming a timeframe, and if necessary perhaps explain your preferences on the article talk page where I posted? I would prefer to say that the Goths are not seen before the 3rd century. It is acceptable to me that the Krakkos draft mentions the 3rd and 4th century without going into the earlier possibilities. I think in any case the connected question is how to make a new Origins section where this will be further discussed. That RFC is still going and I've just posted a linked to my shortest draft so far [2]. Any thoughts on that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:51, 10 April 2021 (UTC)