Dacianism

In this context, the term makes reference to the trend (noticed in several versions of Romanian nationalism) to ascribe a unique quality to the Dacians and their civilisation.Boia, p.160-161 Dacianists attempt to prove either that Dacians had a major part to play in ancient history or even that they had the ascendancy over all cultures (with a particular focus on Ancient Rome, which, in a complete reversal of the founding myth, would have been created by Dacian migrants).Boia, p.149-151 Also noted are the exploitation of the Tărtăria tablets as certain proof that writing originated on proto-Dacian territory, and the belief that the Dacian language survived all the way to the Middle Ages.

An additional, but not universal, feature is the attempted connection between the supposed monotheism of the Zalmoxis cult and Christianity,Boia, p.169 in the belief that Dacians easily adopted and subsequently influenced the religion. Also, Christianity is argued to have been preached to the Daco-Romans by Saint Andrew, who is considered doubtfully as the clear origin of modern-day Romanian Orthodoxy. Despite the lack of supporting evidence, it is the official church stance, being found in history textbooks used in Romanian Orthodox seminaries and theology institutes.Lavinia Stan, Lucian Turcescu, Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania, Oxford University Press, 2007, p.48

The ideas have been explained as part of an inferiority complex present in Romanian nationalism,Verdery, p.177 one which also manifested itself in works not connected with Dacianism, mainly as a rejection of the ideas that Romanian territories only served as a colony of Rome, voided of initiative, and subject to an influx of Latins which would have completely wiped out a Dacian presence.Boia, p.85, 127-147

Dacianism most likely came about with the views professed in the 1870s by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu,Boia, 138-139, 140, 147; Verdery, p.326 one of the main points of the dispute between him and the conservative Junimea. For example, Hasdeu's Etymologicum magnum Romaniae not only claimed that Dacians gave Rome many of her emperors (an idea supported in recent times by Iosif Constantin Drăgan),Boia, p.268 but also that the ruling dynasties of early medieval Wallachia and Moldavia were descendants of a caste of Dacians established with "King" (chieftain) Burebista.Boia, p.82 Other advocates of the idea before World War I included the amateur archaeologist Cezar Bolliac,Boia, p.139-140 as well as Teohari Antonescu and Nicolae Densușianu. The latter composed an intricate and unsupported theory on Dacia as the center of European prehistory,Boia, p.147-148 authoring a complete parallel to Romanian official history, which included among the Dacians such diverse figures as those of the Asen dynasty, and Horea. The main volume of his writings is Dacia Preistorică ("Prehistoric Dacia").

After World War I and throughout Greater Romania's existence, the ideology increased its appeal. The Iron Guard flirted with the concept, making considerable parallels between its projects and interpretations of what would have been Zalmoxis' message.Boia, p.320 Mircea Eliade was notably preoccupied with Zalmoxis' cult, arguing in favour of its structural links with Christianity;Boia, p.152; Eliade, "Zalmoxis, The Vanishing God", in Slavic Review, Vol. 33, No. 4 (December 1974), p.807-809 his theory on Dacian history, viewing Romanisation as a limited phenomenon, is celebrated by contemporary partisans of Dacianism.Boia, p.152; Șimonca

In a neutral context, the Romanian archaeology school led by Vasile Pârvan investigated scores of previously ignored Dacian sites, which indirectly contributed to the idea's appeal at the time.Boia, p.145-146

In 1974 Edgar Papu published in the mainstream cultural monthly Secolul XX an essay titled "The Romanian Protochronism", arguing for Romanian chronological priority for some European achievements.Boia, p.122-123; Martin The idea was promptly adopted by the nationalist Ceaușescu regime, which subsequently encouraged and amplified a cultural and historical discourse claiming the prevalence of autochthony over any foreign influence.Boia, p.117-126 Ceaușescu's ideologues developed a singular concept after the 1974 11th Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, when they attached Dacianism to official Marxism, arguing that the Dacians had produced a permanent and "unorganised state".Boia, p.120 The Dacians had been favoured by several communist generations as autochthonous insurgents against an "imperialist" Rome (with the Stalinist leadership of the 1950s proclaiming them to be closely linked with the Slavic peoples);Boia, p.154-155, 156 however, Ceaușescu's was an interpretation with a distinct motivation, making a connection with the opinions of previous Dacianists.Boia, p.155-157; 330-331

The regime started a partnership with Italian resident, former Iron Guard member and millionaire Iosif Constantin Drăgan, who continued championing the Dacian cause even after the fall of Ceaușescu.Verdary, p.343 Critics regard these excesses as the expression of an economic nationalist course, amalgamating provincial frustrations and persistent nationalist rhetoric, as autarky and cultural isolation of the late Ceaușescu's regime came along with an increase in Dacianist messages.Boia, p.338

Vladimir Tismăneanu wrote:

"Protochronism" was the party-sponsored ideology that claimed Romanian precedence in major scientific and cultural discoveries. It was actually the underpinning of Ceaușescu's nationalist tyranny.{{cite book|first=Vladimir|last=Tismăneanu|title=Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l-UlDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA319|date=15 October 2003|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-23747-6|page=319}}

While no longer backed by a totalitarian state structure after the 1989 revolution, the interpretation still enjoys popularity in several circles.Babeș; Boia, p.356 The main representative of current Protochronism was still Drăgan (now deceased), but the New York City-based physician Napoleon Săvescu took over after Drăgan's death. Together, they issued the magazine Noi, Dacii ("We, the Dacians") and organised a yearly "International Congress of Dacology".[http://www.evz.ro/article.php?artid=89101 "Ca și cînd precedentele reuniuni n-ar fi fost de ajuns, dacologii bat cîmpii in centrul Capitalei"]{{dead link|date=January 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, in Evenimentul Zilei, 22 June 2002 Săvescu still does those.

Săvescu's most famous theory says that the Romanians are not descendants of the Roman colonists and assimilated Dacians, as mainstream historians say, but that they are the descendants of only the Dacians, who spoke a language close to Latin.

Other controversial theories of his include the Dacians (or their ancestors) having developed the first writing system in the world (see the Tărtăria tablets), the first set of laws or having conquered Western Europe, India, Iraq, Japan and the Americas.

{{quote|"If the Harappa culture did not disappear after the Carpatho-Danubian invasion, how come the invaders themselves vanished, leaving no traces behind, or leaving, as Sir Wheeler put it, "nothing but a name?" How could the nomad Carpatho-Danubians, mainly a people of breeders, give birth not only to a new religion, but found splendid cities that outlived them to this day? How could the greatest and most complex literature in the world have come from these Carpatho-Danubian people? Actually, the whole Vedic literature is based on four texts (the oldest being Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda and Sama-Veda, the later Athara-Veda and two poems resembling the Iliad and the Odyssey only two thousand years older; Ramnayana and Mahabharata have preserved a toponymy echoing that of the Aryan Carpatho-Danubians' homeland and share the same main theme – the enmity and rancor between two families fighting over the throne of Bahataral (according to some, today's Banat-Romania).|The Conquest of India by the Carpatho-Danubian People}}

His theories are, however, disregarded by historical journals and most historians, e.g. Mircea Babeș, Lucian Boia and Alexandra Tomiță,{{cite web | last=Manea |first =Irina-Maria | title=Dacomania sau cum mai falsificãm istoria | date=22 March 2017 | url=https://www.historia.ro/sectiune/general/articol/dacomania-sau-cum-mai-falsificam-istoria | language=ro | website=historia.ro | access-date=1 August 2019}}{{cite journal | first=Zoe | last=Petre | title=Burebista, contemporanul nostru | journal=Observator Cultural | date=28 August 2001 | url=http://www.observatorcultural.ro/informatiiarticol.phtml?xid=1609 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071016074247/http://www.observatorcultural.ro/informatiiarticol.phtml?xid=1609 | archive-date=16 October 2007 | url-status=dead | language=ro | access-date=1 August 2019 | issue=79}}{{cite journal | first=Mircea | last=Babeș | title=Renașterea Daciei? | journal=Observator Cultural | date=9 September 2003 | url=http://www.observatorcultural.ro/informatiiarticol.phtml?xid=9188&print=true | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930185124/http://www.observatorcultural.ro/informatiiarticol.phtml?xid=9188&print=true | archive-date=30 September 2007 | url-status=dead | language=ro | access-date=1 August 2019 | issue=185}} who label these theories as pseudoscience and anachronistic and consider that there is not enough scientific evidence to support them.{{cite journal| last=Corbea | first=Andrei | title=Herodot si "Todoreh" | journal=Observator Cultural | date=12 May 2003 | url=https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/attachment-herodot-si-todoreh/ | language=ro | access-date=1 August 2019 | issue=168}} Dacia, journal of the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology, and the history journal Saeculum did not speak highly of him, either.{{cite journal|title=Archaeology, Nationalism and "The History of the Romanians" (2001)|last=Niculescu|first=Gheorghe Alexandru|publisher=Institutul de Arheologie (București)|journal=Dacia: Revue d'archéologie et d'histoire ancienne|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ulppAAAAMAAJ|year=2005|page=101|issn=0070-251X|volume=48-49}}{{cite journal|last1=Arens|first1=Meinolf|last2=Bein|first2=Daniel|title=Katholische Ungarn in der Moldau|journal=Saeculum|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RpZmAAAAMAAJ|year=2003|volume=54|issue=2|issn=0080-5319|publisher=Böhlau Verlag|page=252|doi=10.7788/saeculum.2003.54.2.213|s2cid=201277080|url-access=subscription}}

File:Poiana vase.jpg

"Dacian alphabet" is a term used in Romanian protochronism and Dacianism for pseudohistorical claims of a supposed alphabet of the Dacians prior to the conquest of Dacia and its absorption into the Roman Empire.

Its existence was first proposed in the late 19th century by Romanian nationalists, but has been completely rejected by mainstream modern scholarship.

In the opinion of Sorin Olteanu, a modern expert at the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest, "[Dacian script] is pure fabrication [...] purely and simply Dacian writing does not exist", adding that many scholars believe that the use of writing may have been subject to a religious taboo among the Dacians.{{cite journal | first=Gabriel Teodor |last = Gherasim | title = "Scrierea daca" este pura inventie | url=http://www.revistanoinu.com/Scrierea-daca-este-pura-inventie.html | access-date=9 January 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110107022513/http://www.revistanoinu.com/Scrierea-daca-este-pura-inventie.html |archive-date=7 January 2011 | date=4 March 2007 | journal=Noi, NU! | quote=Este un bun prilej să demontăm un alt mit drag tracomanilor, anume cel al 'scrierii dacice' si al vechimii ei 'imemorabile'. 'Scrierea dacă' este pură inventie. Nu este nici măcar vorba de incertitudini, de chestiuni de interpretare (din ce punct de vedere privim) s.a.m.d., ci pur si simplu nu există nici o scriere dacă [...] Asa cum cred multi dintre învătati, este foarte posibil ca la daci, întocmai ca si la celti până la un anumit moment, scrierea să fi fost supusă unui tabu religios.}} It is known that the ancient Dacians used the Greek and Latin alphabets,{{cite book|last=Daicoviciu|first=Hadrian|title=Dacii|publisher=Editura Enciclopedică Română|year=1972}} though possibly not as early as in neighbouring Thrace where the Ezerovo ring in Greek script has been dated to the 5th century BC. A vase fragment from the La Tène period (see illustration above), a probable illiterate imitation of Greek letters, indicates visual knowledge of the Greek alphabet{{cite journal|last1=Vulpe|last2=Vulpe|first1=Radu|first2=Ecaterina|title=Les fouilles de Poiana|journal=Dacia: Revue d'archéologie et d'histoire ancienne|volume=3-4|page=342|year=1933|url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/33492793/Revista-DACIA-nr-3-4-1933|access-date=January 9, 2011|quote=On ne possède malheureusement pas de plus grand fragment pour établir s'il s'agit d'une inscription en langue latine ou grecque, éventullement gète, ou plutôt d'une ornementation grossière en forme d'alphabet, oeuvre probable d'un potier illetré. Ce tesson présente dans tous les cas un grand intérêt au point de vue de l'influence méridionale sur les artisans de notre station de Poiana, à la fin de l'époque Latène, à laquelle il appartient. Même s'il ne s'agit que d'un jeu d'imitation de quelque potier gète, sa connaissance approximative des lettres grecques ou romaines prouve que les relations entre les Gètes de la Moldavie et le monde gréco-romain d'outre Danube étaient devenues extrêmement étroites à la veille de la directe expansion romaine en Dacie.|language=fr}} during the La Tène period prior to the Roman invasion. Some Romanian writers writing at the end of the 19th century and later identified as protochronists, particularly the Romanian poet and journalist Cezar Bolliac, an enthusiast amateur archaeologist,{{cite web|last=Măndescu|first=Dragoș|title= DESCOPERIREA SITULUI ARHEOLOGIC DE LA ZIMNICEA ȘI PRIMA ETAPĂ A CERCETĂRII SALE: 'EXPLORAȚIUNILE' LUI CEZAR BOLLIAC (1845, 1858?, 1869, 1871–1873)|work=Muzeul Județean Teleorman|url=http://muzeulteleorman.ro/images/18_Mandescu.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240915120542/http://muzeulteleorman.ro/images/18_Mandescu.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=September 15, 2024|access-date=January 9, 2011|language=ro}} claimed to have discovered a Dacian alphabet. They were immediately criticized for archaeologicalBoia, p.92 and linguistic{{cite book|last=Hovelacque|first=Abel|author-link=Abel Hovelacque|title=The science of language: linguistics, philology, etymology|publisher=Chapmanand Hall|year=1877|page=292|quote=The Rumanian writer Eajden... fancies he has lighted upon the old Dacian alphabet, in an alphabet surviving till the last century amongst the Szeklers of Transylvania. But he has altogether overlooked the preliminary question, to what group of languages Dacian may belong.|url=https://archive.org/stream/scienceoflanguag00hove/scienceoflanguag00hove_djvu.txt|access-date=January 9, 2011}}{{cite book|title=Le Moyen âge|publisher=Champion|year=1888|language=fr|page=258|quote=La théorie d'un alphabet dace est une fable; les caractères cyrilliques sont d'origine slave, non roumaine. Ce n'est que depuis le XV^ siècle que le peuple roumain les a admis dans son idiome national.}} Cf. Moldovan G. А latin, cyrill, (ШК es székely irasjegyek kérdése a. románoknál. (A Bp. Szernle 1887. évi oklób. sz.) Bpest, 1887. reasons. Alexandru Odobescu, criticized some of Bolliac's conclusions.{{cite web|last=Oișteanu|first=Andrei|title=Scriitorii romani si narcoticele (1) De la Scavinski la Odobescu|work=22 Revista Grupului Pentru Dialog Social|date=April 30, 2008|url=http://www.revista22.ro/scriitorii-romani-si-narcoticele-1-de-la-scavinski-la-odobescu-4518.html|access-date=January 9, 2011|language=ro|archive-date=January 5, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110105075103/http://www.revista22.ro/scriitorii-romani-si-narcoticele-1-de-la-scavinski-la-odobescu-4518.html|url-status=dead}} In 1871 Odobescu, along with Henric Trenk, inventoried the Fundul Peșterii cave, one of the Ialomiței caves (See the Romanian Wikipedia article) near Buzău. Odobescu was the first to be fascinated by its writings, which were later dated to the 3rd or 4th century.{{cite web|last=Popescu|first=Florentin|title=Les ermitages des Monts de Buzau|work=Le site des monuments rupestres|url=http://rupestre.free.fr/ivanovo/suite1.php|access-date=January 9, 2011|language=fr|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110720230830/http://rupestre.free.fr/ivanovo/suite1.php|archive-date=2011-07-20|url-status=dead}} In 2002, the controversial{{cite web|last=Ungureanu|first=Dan|title=Nu trageti in ambulanta|work=Oservator Cultural|url=http://www.observatorcultural.ro/arhivaarticol.phtml?xid=8266|date=May 6, 2003|access-date=January 8, 2011|language=ro|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040327150347/http://www.observatorcultural.ro/arhivaarticol.phtml?xid=8266|archive-date=March 27, 2004}} Romanian historian, Viorica Enăchiuc, stated that the Codex Rohonczi is written in a Dacian alphabet.{{cite book|last=Enăchiuc|first=Vioroca|title=Rohonczi Codex: descifrare, transcriere si traducere (Déchiffrement, transcription et traduction)|publisher=Editura Alcor|year=2002|isbn=973-8160-07-3|language=ro, fr}}

The equally controversial{{cite web|last=Olteanu|first=Sorin|title=Raspuns Petan|work=Thraco-Daco-Moesian Languages Project|url=http://soltdm.com/reviews/raspuns_petan.htm|access-date=January 9, 2011|language=ro}} linguist Aurora Petan (2005) claims that some Sinaia lead plates could contain unique Dacian scripts.{{cite web|last=Pețan|first=Aurora|title=A possible Dacian royal archive on lead plates|work=Antiquity|url=http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/petan/|access-date=January 8, 2011}}

The linguist George Pruteanu called protochronism as "the barren and paranoid nationalism", because protochronism claims that the Dacian language was the origin of Latin and all other languages, including Hindi and Babylonian.{{cite web | date=26 March 1996 | title=Doar o vorbă SĂȚ-I mai spun | website=George Pruteanu | url=http://georgepruteanu.ro/4doarovorba/emis000-protv-960325-traco-daci.htm | language=ro | access-date=21 January 2020}}

• Antiquization

{{Reflist}}

• Lucian Boia, Istorie și mit în conștiința românească, Bucharest, Humanitas, 1997
• B. P. Hasdeu, Ethymologicum Magnum Romaniae. Dicționarul limbei istorice și poporane a românilor (Pagini alese), Bucharest, Minerva, 1970
• {{in lang|ro}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20030925120042/http://revista22.ro/html/index.php?art=241&nr=2002-10-31 Mircea Martin, "Cultura română între comunism și naționalism" (II)], in Revista 22, 44 (660)/XIII, October–November 2002
• {{in lang|ro}} [https://web.archive.org/web/20070930185355/http://www.observatorcultural.ro/informatiiarticol.phtml?xid=14834 Ovidiu Șimonca, "Mircea Eliade și 'căderea în lume'"], review of Florin Țurcanu, Mircea Eliade. Le prisonnier de l'histoire, in Observatorul Cultural
• Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism. Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu's Romania, University of California Press, 1991. {{ISBN|0-520-20358-5}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20180207210850/http://www.dacii.ro/ www.dacii.ro: A site displaying prominent characteristics of Romanian Protochronism.]
• [http://www.dacia.org/ www.dacia.org: A site connected with Săvescu.]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20060519050105/http://lett.ubbcluj.ro/~echinox/caiete1/23.html Monica Spiridon's essay on the intellectual origins of Romanian Protochronism.]
• [http://www.rferl.org/reports/eepreport/2004/04/7-010404.asp Historical myths, legitimating discourses, and identity politics in Ceaușescu's Romania (Part 1)], [http://www.rferl.org/reports/eepreport/2004/04/8-140404.asp (Part 2)]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20071119161248/http://soltdm.com/tdman/tdman_0.htm Tracologie și Tracomanie (Thracology and Thracomania)] at [http://soltdm.com/index.htm Sorin Olteanu's LTDM Project (SOLTDM.COM)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071113100711/http://soltdm.com/index.htm |date=2007-11-13 }}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20071220062351/http://soltdm.com/tdman/teme.htm Teme tracomanice (Thracomaniacal Themes)] at [http://soltdm.com/index.htm Sorin Olteanu's LTDM Project (SOLTDM.COM)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071113100711/http://soltdm.com/index.htm |date=2007-11-13 }}

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