Talk:Germanic peoples/Archive 16

Archive 10

←

Archive 14

Archive 15

Archive 16

Archive 17

Archive 18

→

Archive 20

Bold idea: should we remove the languages section (3.3)?

Food for thought. For discussion and consideration about the longer term.

I think our discussion of Germanic languages in this article is both very long and detailed, and also it has developed in such a way that it can not be described as something written in support of understanding the historical ethnic groups called Germanic. In effect it is a stand-alone discussion of a language family which has more than one WP article of its own. It was expanded in good faith (mainly by Alcaios who definitely did a good job) to improve upon the worse quality but shorter section (probably my fault) in older versions of this article (e.g. late March 2020 [1]). But now I am daring to ask whether maybe that old section should simply have been entirely deleted instead? Shouldn't this large (and always growing) article be structured around topics not covered by other articles? Maybe a difficult question, but it seems worth thinking about. (Note that this is certainly not a criticism of any editor.)

Currently this article's discussion of Germanic languages takes up about 18,500 bytes. Over the last year I think it has been the part of the article which has most expanded. The problem is that when I look through this article to assess it as a whole, this improved section also has a major impact on the coherence of the article. According to all previous discussions, this article is about an historical ethnic classification. Of course the various proposals about an associated language group are relevant, and need to be linked to in appropriate ways, but IMHO currently this article, read as a whole, mixes up an historical ethnic classification, and discussions about a language family.

I think it has been basically agreed over time that this article needs to be especially careful of sticking to a core set of topics, and separable topics need to be delegated to other articles whenever possible. The title of this article attracts many different types of material connected to different things known as "Germanic". This historically caused the article to grow in uncoordinated ways, e.g. in 2019, and made it difficult for editors to maintain a good article and a reasonable length. I do not believe we've really fixed that problem. I believe we made some progress in reducing this problem with restructuring in early 2020, but it seems everyone agrees more work will be needed in the future, and after looking through the article again today I find this languages section is now like a large article within an article. It seems important to discuss this, in order to think about long-run visions for this article? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:13, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this section should be removed completely since Proto-Germanic is associated with Ancient Germanic peoples, although some or most of it could be moved to Proto-Germanic or Germanic languages, which are poorly sourced.

Regarding the deconstructionist/hypercritical approach adopted by Halsall and Goffart, I think they are just as wrong as the 19th-century romanticists they are trying to confront. You can have a critical approach of ancient sources without falling into a kind of philological paranoia that leads you to conclude that "Germanic peoples never existed because ancient sources are sometimes wrong about them". Most classical writers didn't have a first-hand account of those peoples, and some of them like Caesar had a political agenda in mind, so they obviously made mistakes or wrote biased accounts. Furthermore, saying that Germanic peoples shared some common cultural traits that included the Germanic languages does not mean that they were one unified people with common political goals or the conscience of a common ancestry. Gauls can be defined as a Celtic people (or group of peoples) that spoke the Gaulish language, but all modern scholars agree that they were a collection of diverse tribes that were not even able to form a common military front against the Roman invader ca. 50 BC.

J. F. Drinkwater's article provides a balanced summary of the issue in the Oxford Classical Dictionary:

Germans (Germani), after the Celts the second major linguistic and cultural grouping encountered by the Graeco-Roman world in northern Europe ... The early development of the Germanic peoples is notoriously difficult to establish. Modern research has demonstrated how much our two best informants, Caesar and Tacitus, were influenced by their cultural prejudices and their literary strategies. (For example, Caesar's emphasis on the Rhine as a distinct boundary between Celts and Germans is now recognized as political, not ethnographic, in origin.) The views of the Celtic Gauls no doubt also confused the picture (the ethnic, ‘German’, appears to have been Gallic, picked up and exploited by Caesar, and never applied by Germans to themselves). The chroniclers of the post-Roman Germanic successor-kingdoms were equally capable of inventing significant elements of their early history; and modern studies have been bedevilled by nationalism and ideology ... The reconstruction of Germanic society faces similar problems, and must also take into account the wide geographical spread of Germanic settlement and cultural differences between its many peoples. However, careful combination of our best literary information (above all, Tacitus' Germania) with modern archaeological research produces a picture of a simple (by comparison with the Celtic) but developing iron age society, with permanent farms and villages ... Alcaios (talk) 11:55, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Alcaios: fair and constructive remarks. I think it often happens that an article that gets a lot of attention also becomes a place where a sub-topic gets worked on better than in the specialist articles, and it occurs to me that this might be such a case. Concerning reducing the discussion, I also think it needs to become more oriented towards assisting discussion of the classical Germanic peoples, if that is possible. (Otherwise, what is it for?) One interesting indicator of a problem is that we still have a quite separate section about how the Germanic peoples are categorized in classical literature and historical discussions. Traditionally this discussion would have been done together with the languages discussion, although this is difficult to do properly these days giving the increasing divide between the two approaches.

Comments on the supposed Goffart issue

Concerning a supposed "deconstructionist/hypercritical approach" (the terms used on Wikipedia, not in academia) this is clearly something that keeps getting mentioned here, but I can't say I truly understand how these remarks can be compared to anything the historians are really saying about this topic, and the scholars have to be our sources. I fear there are assumptions being made by WP editors which are not accurate, and partly this might be because of misunderstandings coming from the simpler concerns of language-related disciplines. Consider your parody version of what you think Goffart is arguing: "Germanic peoples never existed because ancient sources are sometimes wrong about them". Actually, that's not the debate. Most modern historians specialized on this agree: there was not only a lack of unity, there was no real ethnic group which corresponded to the term "Germanic peoples" used today. So it is not a question of finding any "true" definition of that ethnic group. ...But if it is not an ethnic group, then it is a more artificial scholarly category... Indeed, you seem to suggest that the term "Germanic peoples" can be easily understood (for example by our readers) as just a commonly used objective term for a category of people who have a few things in common, like farms and villages from the Drinkwater quote. First problem with that is that it is not true, unless perhaps you are focusing on a question like the origins of the Germanic languages, which would look at a small area, and mainly relate to periods before the most well-known "Germanic peoples" in classical history. As far as the latter are concerned, no one is talking about there being a single "Germanic" material culture anymore, and there was not even a single Germanic language. 3rd century Goths, for example, are indistinguishable archaeologically from all the other peoples who lived in the enormous area from the Danube to the Don. The quite different complex of related material cultures which formed on the Middle Danube in the aftermath of Attila is also not one where the Germanic-speakers can be distinguished from the others. The Wielbark material culture, which may have been partly triggered by incoming Germanic speakers, is universally described as one which developed from older ones in the same area. Even it is not "archaeologically Germanic". The second problem is that I think you are misreading what the concerns are in the debate between historians who agree with Goffart and those who agree with someone like Liebeschuetz. I would describe it as a debate which is openly between someone who wants more clarity of language and opponents who feel this will ruin a good traditional story about the Roman empire versus the northern Europeans. Historians arguing against Goffart, like Liebeschuetz, see it just like he does as a debate about whether that story needs to be told this way. Because this keeps coming up I collected some quotes here [2]. From what I understand on this talk page, many editors with a background in the linguistics world feel that this can't possibly be the real debate? But it is. These things are important to historians, and as it happens they are also important to some of our readers. It is strongly connected to whether historians should continue to present everything in terms of a single "Migration period" which leads to the "Fall of Rome", being caused by a single great mass of "barbarian hordes". The alternative mainstream narrative (NOT "fringe" at all) is that the main thing connecting northern European barbarians was their centuries of interconnectedness with the empire that manipulated them economically and politically and employed them as soldiers. These historians argue that Rome fell mainly because of internal breakdowns.

TLDR. It is a mainstream terminology debate, which makes the term "Germanic peoples" a genuinely complicated one, is connected to a lot of respectable debates in historiography concerning the manner in which the western Roman empire fell. In practice it means that the old 19th century baggage of this term is still here with us, and scholars are all using terms in different ways, and making quotable quotes which disagree with each other.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:24, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

ADDED: The practical question on the "Goffart" issue is still unclear to me. As editors trying to make a good summary we need to know more than we summarize, so there's nothing wrong in principle with raising it on the talk page, but is the article itself really being unduly dominated by this terminology debate, which connects to debates about the fall of Rome? Unless the argument is that it needs to be "censored" out of WP completely, which would seem very controversial (mainstream books are literally using different terminology, this can especially impact, for example, the big topic of the Goths), then I'd have expected to see people mention actual passage they think need changing. The negative comments have tended to be very general. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:09, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

My "parody" was directed at Halsall more than Goffart. When you read his blog and Twitter posts, it is clear that he is trying to deconstruct the concept of ancient "Germanic people" for political reasons, that is to dry up the sources of contemporary nationalist and far-right movements. Goffart is way more reasonable – I agree with his arguments but not with his conclusion. Calling Germanic peoples 'Germanic' does not mean that we should see them as a collective entity that regarded itself as 'Germanic' in contrast to Romans and Celts. Goffart seems to imply that using the term 'Germanic peoples', as did 19th-century scholars, would necessarily lead to the adoption of the same old conclusions about them. Maybe he's worried about how the general public would interpret the idea of ' Germanness' (or rather 'Germanic-ness') if scholars keep on using this term, but it shouldn't matter at all. Scholars are not responsible for what political activists or the general public make of their theories or the terms they use. Alcaios (talk) 17:25, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Alcaios: thanks for that clarification, which makes sense to me. I think there is one gap in what you seeing so far. You think Goffart is naïve and no-one - scholar or general public - is actually going to believe in that stuff. Apparently you also think the opinions of Halsall are shared by only a small minority.

too many words

Actually, Goffart, Halsall, and Michael Kulikowski, among others, have been presenting detailed and respectable arguments and evidence that the scholars who demand that we stick to the 19th century terminology are doing it as part of an argument that especially the Goths were in some kind of collective and coordinated wave together with Western European groups who happened to be in the same language family. You can't read Peter Heather's recent extremely popular books without getting this. He is not classifying Goths by language family because of a respect for the objectivity of linguistics, for example. He makes that clear. The word "Germanic", used in its 19th century Germanic language family=ethnicity way, is a link historians can make between Eastern European barbarians and Western ones. Heather knows explains (he is still a real scholar) how tenuous this is, and constantly asserts that while there is very little evidence, at least we can assume that the Germanic speakers were "dominant" among all the many Ukrainian groups that can't be distinguished from each other archaeologically. (And they presumably were, for a period after the Carpi, and before the Huns, both of whom are NOT presented as part of the big thing that was happening, because not "Germanic dominated".) Why is this so important to him? This terminology is all part of an argument, because it changes how everything looks. This use of terminology is part of a very popular (but not consensus) argument about the fall of Rome. It has nothing to do with Goffart or Halsall being controversial or seeing the evidence extremely differently from Heather. By my reading, this is also consistent with the words of the defenders themselves, such as Liebeschuetz and Heather, and not a "dirty secret" or anything like that. It is a known debate. So I think you are second guessing the scholars a bit too much. Kulikowski's review of a Heather book: [3]. As a secondary point, I disagree that scholars have no responsibility for the political effect of the ideas they promote to sell books. I guess this is something only academics say, but not all of them. The rest of humanity disagrees. In any case it is an especially weak claim in this case. Peter Heather has himself attached the "brand" of his "Fall of Rome caused by migrants" analysis to public anti-immigration and Brexit debates, so there is no point blaming "activists" - he sees his own history writing as politically relevant to migration debates: civilizations are ended by migrants according to Heather, Perkins-Ward and Niall Ferguson. Fellow scholars are clearly very critical of Heather's more recent, more political books, and we can't really ignore that can we? On WP, do we say a historian who sells more paper-backs, and has more political influence, is a better RS? I do not think so. I am not saying we have to take a position of course, but we can not ignore all these things when we are doing our background reading to judge the field.

TLDR: That some SOME scholars call Goths "Germanic", but not all, is a big thing we have to handle, and something done by historians largely for rhetorical purposes in a particular debate about the fall of Rome. In their own texts they explain what they mean by it, and it is not simple. There is no "simple but developing" Germanic culture which a majority of current historians believe in, like the Drinkwater quote seems to mention. Your parody was just wrong, and not right when applied to Halsall either. Coming back to the practical concerns though, what implications does any of this have for the article here? Does the article report it wrongly or unduly? Any ideas how to make it better?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:26, 10 April 2021 (UTC) ADDED: Concerning that "simple but developing" Germanic culture I suppose the "Early" in our Early Germanic culture article was aiming at caution about asserting any single Germanic culture after the earliest period (using a linguistic definition of Germanic, not an historical one, if I understand correctly), but the article does not give a lot of confidence about this concept being mainstream in the 21st century.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:25, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that Goffart is "naïve". He is probably just worried about the eventual misunderstandings that would escort the term 'Germanic' in the public debate. Honestly, I see Halsall as a partisan source. Just read his pinned post on Twitter: "expect left-wing politics". I don't want left-wing or right-wing politics – I just want the historical truth. The use of scientific conclusions in a political debate is another issue. Let's imagine that scholarship reaches the conclusion that the fall of Rome was mostly caused by immigration. They shouldn't be able to write it because the far-right would use it to further their agenda? This would be ridiculous. Coming back to the practical concerns, I think this article should reach a balanced presentation of current scholarship: e.g. "Liebeschuetz argues that xxxx. On the other hand, Goffart thinks that xxx". I mean, this is not the only controversial article on Wikipedia. Alcaios (talk) 20:41, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Alcaios: I guess all sources are partisan to some extent. Certainly Heather is controversial on this topic for that reason. I guess Goffart and Heather have no blog, which means you are comparing apples and pears. In any case, that's not really relevant to whether Halsall and Heather are RS though. I think we agree on the practical approach in theory, but to be honest I find your vision of being able to split out the political debate from a debate about a "grand narrative" like this in history is not realistic. The debate about the fall of Rome is all about political ideas. It is a good respectable debate among reliable sources though. Still, on most "factual" issues Heather and Halsall are easy to compare and relatively similar, and like you say, the simple political/narrative differences are also reasonably routine on Wikipedia. I'm sure we would not be having this discussion if it were not for the fact that in this case it affects terminology/definitions being used, which connects to the title of the article itself. While the current article still needs more work I believe the approach you describe is not inconsistent with it? So I wonder what we are talking about. :)

What we have on this talk page are constant complaints about (if I understand correctly) there being any mention of those differences at all - as if not mentioning them would be avoiding the problem and more neutral. People like Heather are the sources still defending the 19th century definitions which say Goths are Germani, which no longer has a simple factual justification, but are connected to something a bit "political". Halsall is certainly not the only historian expressing doubt about the way that this disorts understanding of history. Indeed, you really need to read the sources you are defending, because Heather himself explains that in his recent work Germanic peoples (the various terms he uses) means peoples "dominated by" Germanic speaking peoples. It is a quite complex argumentation for the 19th century language, based on a bunch of non-consensus sub-arguments which can only be understood by reading the whole context.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:06, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not defending Heather against Goffart. I have not even mentioned Heather's name until now, and I have said that I find Goffart's arguments valid although I don't agree with some of his conclusions. Of course, Halsall should be considered a reliable source on WP. "I see him as a partisan source" is just my personal opinion. I just can't trust someone who admitted that he's writing a "left-wing" version of history and who said that "Oxford-trained historians ... provide succour to far-right extremists", before implicitly linking their research to Anders Breivik's terrorist attack. Alcaios (talk) 21:25, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Interesting chat, but maybe not relevant to this article

Personally, I believe in "trust but verify" and I assume all writers on politically hot topics (which the fall of Rome is at the moment) will have their own political influences. So I prefer it when writers don't hide it. (I do not think this equates to being less objective for example.) So much more could be said but I am not really sure why we are discussing it at such length here. For this article, at best it is background - helpful for understanding the context, so we can finally distil some small explanations, but only as much as we need to write about Germanic peoples. I suppose the discussion at least reminds us that we are writing in period where there are several competing mainstream scholarly positions about a few issues that are difficult to extricate from the basic definition of this article's topic. For example, should we call Goths "Germanic" (outside of linguistic discussions), were western European medieval institutions "Germanic", and did Rome face a single cultural entity called the "Germanic peoples"? By all accounts, in all 3 cases there has been a long term trend to a "no" among academics, but a recent reaction from a number of conservative historians mainly in England, who've had a big public impact. This has involved best-sellers, and going direct to the public in various other forms of media. (Niall Ferguson perhaps triggered a lot of the concerns around when he cited these historians in his infamous article after the 2015 Paris attacks. FWIW on his blog somewhere Halsall comments that Heather is more balanced than Ferguson.) I think it helps to know this even though none of us envision such things being mentioned in this article. You mentioned already that there are normal ways of dealing with such issues on WP, and I mentioned to you that hopefully this article has been worked on with those approaches in mind. In terms of problems we've had, I can think of one which is that with a hot topic like this we have to avoid using wordings which imply a strong field consensus if there is none, and we especially have to avoid doing this based on sources who we know represent a controversial position. One type of source which has come up a few times has been the short articles written in English tertiary works, that tend to be dominated by certain groups of scholars. These can't be used to define a field consensus if there is none. As you mentioned, when we know there are several mainstream controversial positions, we list them. References

Hopefully what we've written above makes sense to others also, and there is no difference in practical approach here which is causing a problem for this article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:18, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong. Niall Ferguson is as problematic as Guy Halsall in my opinion. A far-left historian is not better than a far-right historian. To recenter the discussion on the article, I think that most debates on here are mainly due to mutual misunderstandings. Some editors see others are deconstructionists while the other side see them as essentialists. But as you see, we all agree on most things. Alcaios (talk) 12:00, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes I think so. But just to remind why this came up, Halsall is not necessarily seen as being more political than the group of conservative historians who push for old 19th century terminology - who have connected themselves to anti-migration, pro-Brexit, anti multicultural politics - and not only in scholarly works. (Ferguson is not the only one.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:53, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Include central Europe

Very few scholars, if any, would argue that Germanic peoples only existed in Northern Europe, they also existed in what is today Germany and Poland, both central European countries. In fact according to the Jastorf theory, which is mentioned in the article, they would have originated in Germany rather than Scandinavia. I feel it would make sense to change the opening paragraphs about them to include this, mentioning a north-central European origin, rather than just northern european.

Additionally, the wording towards the end of the opening paragraph is rather awkward and strange. It almost seems to imply that Germans are not a branch of Germanic peoples themselves, and the quotes around the name "German" seems to be done with malicious intent, almost to say they are not a legitimate people. This should be changed at the very least for better neutrality. This article should be more factually based and not based on the flavor of the month of some nordicist. Valdemarpeterson (talk) 16:55, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for posting here, and welcome to Wikipedia. I presume you were editing recently. On the first point I don't think it is a matter of strong opinions - just keeping the language simple. Aren't Germany and Poland also in northern Europe? Keep in mind this has been tweaked and discussed a lot already. On the second point please: WP:AGF. There has been a lot of discussion in the history of this article, and a lot of searching for published sources. Two conclusions were that this article is about a group of peoples from history, and secondly that normal scholars never talk about modern Germanic peoples, at least since WW2, unless they are talking about Germanic language speaking peoples - but even that concept is fairly unusual. Germanic-speaking peoples has its own article and is a language-based definition, but it is not much used and people who use such terminology seem to exclude people like Jamaicans. In other words it is a racial, or at least ancestry-based classification which purports to describe a practical way in which people should be grouped based on the language family their ancestors spoke. For example English people are closer to Austrians than to French people, and Austrians are closer to Swedes than Czechs. To put it simpler: the idea of modern "Germanic peoples", is not a concept normally used by scholars since WW2. I am not sure if you have experience on Wikipedia but basically our mission is summarizing what is written in the best publications. So we can always change our mind, but then it should be based on what good publications say.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:08, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

• I think Oswald Spangler said that the modern Germans are primarily a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples (modern DNA studies prove that), and that's not even taking into consideration the mixing that occurred east of the Elbe river with the Slavs (some "Germanic" nations or regions have almost as much Slavic DNA as they do "Germanic"). Also, let's not forget the mixing around the Alps with the Latin (Roman) populations. Also, there is the Germanic substrate hypothesis which basically says that Proto-Germanic may have been a contact language, which hints at the possibility that form the start Germanic peoples were a mix of different groups which came together. So, from the very beginning, the "German" or "Germanic" stock was an illusive concept, and this desperate search to try and make Germans or the Germanic people into some ancient monolithic entry is lame, or for that matter the obsessive search to define and claim a concrete geographic area at a time when ancient peoples came and went. As for Poland, it was a mix territory at best, between both Germanic peoples and Early Slavs. Same with Scandinavia, most of it in-fact was originally inhabited by Finnic peoples in the ancient times. So, lets not start to paint with broad strokes... Northern Europe (all) and Central Europe (all) was "GERMANIC". --E-960 (talk) 19:44, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

That sounds about right. All humans are mixed, and to the extent that some populations are relatively isolated these are identifiable now. If there is one thing the new genetic technologies have shown so far, although many amateurs on the internet still want to see the opposite, it is that Europeans are all basically most closely related to whoever their neighbours are - not depending on language or political borders. That makes sense given how small Europe is. The simple pre-war ideas which tried to map language families with material cultures and snippets from classical literature led to crazy ideas about whole populations moving around and totally replacing other supposedly pure populations. Of course people did move and did kill each other, but I think all serious scholars have indeed moved on from the simple (and frankly dangerous) ideas of the late 19th and early 20th century. In terms of finding a more subtle picture which allows both movement and mixing, by definition this will require a lot of genetic data and analysis, so it is going slowly. For now, I'd say all scholars are in any case more careful about anything which oversimplifies. In that context, the idea of a single race of people called Germanic lasting for thousands of years, and able to be recognized by amateurs looking at language families, is basically nuts. You can see the attraction, because it creates a simple heroic multi-generational narrative. Arguably Tolkien's books are based on that old vision, and they are great entertainment.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:06, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

The discussion has unnecessariy drifted (off-topic textwalls, again!) from the actual points made by the OP:

1. I agree that the quotes around "German" in the opening paragraph are indeed misplaced. There is nothing so-called about modern German and Germans. Maybe italics are better here to avoid unintended associations (e.g. spuriousness) that come with the use of scarequotes. Quotes only make sense when the terms German and especially Germans are used in an obsolete manner as synonyms for Germanic and Germanic people(s) (as explained in note 3). Or when the adjective Germanic is dissociated from its eponym (the Germani), as in Germanic languages, and then again dissociated from its linguistic meaning to be reapplied with an ethnic meaning (as in "Germanic peoples" as an unhelpful and ideologized shorthand for "Germanic-speaking peoples"). –Austronesier (talk) 16:05, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
2. Germani were doubtless also located south of the Baltic Sea, so the use of a wishy-washy term like "Northern Europe" (do we cut Europe into two or three here?) can be problematic. Some readers (including the OP) may primarily have a threefold division in mind, and then "Northern Europe" becomes inaccurate.

No idea how to fix the second point (maybe: ...Northern and northern Central Europe...?), but I wanted to point out what the comment actually was about before it gets drowned. –Austronesier (talk) 16:05, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

• Austronesier, I think Northern Europe is sufficient, if you want to get specific, then you should be more accurate on all fronts and say Southern Scandinavia, because "Germanic" peoples continuously resided only in the area of Denmark, northern Germany, southern Sweden and costal Norway, the rest of Scandinavia was/and to a degree is still populated by the Finno-Ugric peoples/Sámi people, as illustrated here: [4] and [5]. So, before you start expanding the Germanic territories in Central Europe, take a step back and downgrade their described range in other places for more accuracy. Btw, the Germanic peoples entered Central Europe around 1st century AD and left by the 5th, so this hardly can be considered their core territory. Also, why not say Western Europe, because after the 5th century they moved to placed like France and northern Italy (creating Germanic kingdoms there), so I don't understand this obsession with "Central Europe" or Poland for that matter - it was just one migratory phase. --E-960 (talk) 17:03, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

If you divide Europe into more than just a northern and southern part, you will have a lot of the Germani by Caesar and Tacitus in central Europe, and by many defintions also in "Central Europe". –Austronesier (talk) 17:58, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

No really strong opinions on either of those two proposals Austronesier. But OTOH I find it odd to see quote marks called "malicious" when they refer to a term, and I think splitting Europe into north and south is very common, and widely understood the same way? I think a nice broad term avoids an impossible attempt to get more exact.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

I have three points. 1. If we are taking the view of Germanic from antiquity, then yes Germania was primarily in Germany, as defined by Rome. Remember, the modern lingual view of Germanic languages may or may not correlate to the original concept as defined by Rome. Some of these people may have been Celtic speakers, including the tribes originally defined by Germani. Additionally, there is not a consensus of the etymology of Germanic or Germani, so, viewing this from antiquity, we would have to describe the ancient Germanic peoples from the Roman perspective, not the modern lingual category.

2.Indeed, in antiquity what is modern day Germany as well as Poland were considered Northern Europe. However, thsee territories today are typically not Considered Northern Europe, but rather they are typically considered central Europe. I can understand how Northern Europe would be considered appropriate wording, but the reason I feel it is not as neutral as "north-central Europe" is primarily because there are several nordicist groups online who push the idea that Germanic=Scandinavian and Germanic=/=German. Additionally from a "racial purity" view this would not make much sense either because as mentioned above the Scandinavian Germanic tribes were heavily admixed with Finno-Ugric populations.

3. I belive it would make more sense to put German in italics rather than in quotes, much as the same sentence puts Germanic and Germani in italics rather than quotes. Putting German in quotes before the word people almost seems to hold a connotation that Germans are not a legitimate people, it comes across as snarky and insulting. As a mental exercise, it would be similar if a page had "black" people or "jewish" people.

Thank you for considering my points and I hope my changes will be taken into consideration. Valdemarpeterson (talk) 00:08, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I would also like to point out that Germanic speakers still very much exist in the area of Central Europe, as one user seemed to suggest otherwise. The areas of Germany, Austria, and parts of Switzerland, as well as smaller nations such as Liechtenstein are very much Germanic speaking today. The idea that Germanic speakers do not exist in central Europe today strikes me as odd. Maybe this was in reference to Poland?

Either way, even the furthest Northern part of Germany, Schleswig Holstein, which is typically considered one of the strongest candidates for the origin of the Germanic languages, is still considered part of Central Europe regardless.

Valdemarpeterson (talk) 00:31, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

• Valdemarpeterson, well here is the problem, the term "Central Europe" is a bit shifty, and the use of the term only gained prominence after the fall of the Communist Block, before that it was Eastern and Western Europe. Even today, you you have various understanding of this term, as illustrated here [6] vs. [7]. So, in some cases Central Europe, equals: Germany, Switzerland, Austria on one side, and Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary on the other. While others consider the Visegrád Group countries as Central Europe (a sub-category of Eastern Europe), and Germany, Switzerland and Austria are really part of Western Europe, as here: [8]. Also, if we are going to place the Germanic peoples in the context of Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, the divide was quite simple everything north of the Romans was Northern Europe. --E-960 (talk) 06:32, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

• ...or say Southern Scandinavia and North German Plain. --E-960 (talk) 07:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

• 1. The article is about the historic peoples. However, challenges remain. Clearly when scholars talk about those historic peoples they use different definitions, or refer to different ways of defining Germanic peoples. Some use the linguistic definitions (or use linguistic definitions as an excuse for using 19th century terminology and including certain peoples such as the Goths who were not classically Germanic). Despite the widely different definitions, it is clear that historians are talking about more or less the same topic and so we have been trying to make this article rather broad in its coverage.
• 2. If you consider the above, then Northern makes sense, because both vague, and big. I don't think we can exclude Franks, Goths, and Scandinavians for example? I think this would not achieve an editor consensus.
• 3. I have done the easy bit and removed the quotation marks. I see the issue. I am not sure italics are even needed.
• 4. Of course there are many Germanic language speakers in Europe today, but that is not relevant to this article. See Germanic-speaking Europe. This article is about the historic Germanic peoples (Germani), whose connection to Germanic speaking is an imperfect overlap. There are no Germanic peoples today, but there are Germanic-speaking peoples today. The connection between them is linguistic, not ancestral. (Germanic is not a traditional term for any modern peoples, but only one used by scholars looking at languages. Of course there are strong ancestral connections between all modern people of European descent: Europe is small and had a population explosion in recent centuries. There is thus no known special ancestral link connecting say Austrians and English people to each other more than they are connected to say Slovenes or Bretons. Finally, Germanic speakers can have any ancestry at all.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:42, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

The point in reference to modern Germanic speakers was not made as an argument, just for what I felt was a strange comment in regard to a user suggesting that Germanic speakers invaded and then left central Europe, when they very well still exist in central Europe today.

The part of the article that I find dicey is that it attempts to relate the Roman concept of Germania in antiquity to the modern lingual definition of Germanic.

Yes, it could very well be that the Germanic languages developed from the Nordic bronze age culture as many scholars believe. However, this is not necessarily the view of Germanic from antiquity. For instance, if the la tene derived cultures were indeed the origin of the Celtic language and culture, the entire province of Germania Superior would have been in areas like Switzerland and would have been Celtic, and probably Germania Inferior would have been Celtic as well. Yet, these regions were still considered Germanic by Rome. Additionally, Magna Germania extended south to what is present day southern Germany, core territory of the original Hallstatt culture. The point in mind is that the original tribes that Rome labelled as Germani were of this cultual derivation rather than a Nordic Bronze age derived culture, and Rome also included these core regions in their definition of Germanic.

Additionally, Tacitus relates that the interior of Germania was Irminonic, he did not list the tribes he considered Irminonic, but he did mention the Suebi as living in Northern Germany. Later Roman authors connected the Suebi of southwest Germany to the Irminones, which is partially why many believe the Irminonic people's to have had a northern origin.

I do not find this point compelling given that Suebi seems to have been a generic endonym of many Indo-European derived peoples, being cognate not only to other Germanic tribes such as the Suedi of Sweden, but also to non-Germanic people's such as the Italic people known as the Sabines.

So, it could very well be that several tribes of Germania called themselves Suebi, or a variation of it, but were unrelated. An example of this could be seen with the Suedi, a people later known as the Swedes, who connected their ancestral kingship to Ingvi-Freyr, rather than Irmin (Odin). This would imply that they considered themselves of the Ingvaeonic category, rather than Irminonic as other Suebi tribes considered themselves.

The main point is, many scholars will begin with the assumption that the definition of Germanic from antiquity has to fit our modern lingual definition, which causes them to form a confirmation bias, seeking information to prove the connection while ignoring evidence that goes to the contrary of this theory. Valdemarpeterson (talk) 17:41, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Additionally, genetic evidence comes into play primarily with migration era samples. However, many of these samples, such as the Langobardic samples, were from people's that were already described by authors in antiquity to have come south from Scandinavia, so yes it makes sense that their specific DNA is Scandinavian. This does not then necessitate that ALL Germanic peoples had come from Scandinavia. Other migration era samples, such as the ones found in Bavaria, had DNA most similar to modern day Germans for instance. Again, a conclusion is drawn based on a confirmation bias, but without looking at the evidence from a holistic perspective. Valdemarpeterson (talk) 17:48, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, no one will disagree that the article still faces challenges to get neater and simpler in these areas, but do you have any suggestions? Remember they should be framed in terms of what good sources say?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:54, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I really think that saying "Norther Europe" is sufficient for several reasons. First, the concept of Central Europe was not around in the ancient times. Second, as I noted earlier the term Central Europe does not always include the area of modern Germany. Third, if you are going to include Central Europe in the description, why are you not including the term Western Europe as well? Since, after expanding into Central Europe and then leaving to go west, the Germanic tribes expanded their territory significantly and formed a number of Germanic kingdoms in Western Europe, as illustrated here: [9]. As Andrew Lancaster noted, the term Northern Europe is broad enough to cover all these migration phases without getting to detailed. --E-960 (talk) 16:33, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

removed definition?

@Andrew Lancaster removed the definition of the subject and ask me to discuss this here first. I think that WP:TERTIARY source is perfect for a lead of the article. I look at the similar pages like: Slavs, Turkic peoples, Finno-Ugric peoples etc, they all start with a clear definition. This article is not only about the historic peoples, but also about the modern, see sources and interwikis. Delasse (talk) 06:52, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Due to a deficiency of the English language, this article might be mistaken for a broad article about "Germanic-speaking peoples" of all ages, but actually covers a topic that has a well-defined lemma in all other major languages on this planet: Germanos, Germains, Germanen, Германцы, جرمان, ゲルマン人. All these refer to the ancient people. You will notice that EB does the same, in spite of the misleading opener in their "Germanic peoples"-article. Austronesier (talk) 14:22, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

From working on this article (for some years) I have learned that the idea of Germanic peoples continuing to exist after the classical period is a quite controversial one, and not for "fringe" reasons. In 2019 there was a LOT of discussion and searching for evidence to the contrary.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:04, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster you can say the same that Slavic peoples, Turkic peoples, Finno-Ugric peoples do not continue to exist now. But the articles about them in english wikipedia do exist. Why Germanic peoples are different? Delasse (talk) 19:06, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe it's simply because the article "Germanic peoples" is better maintained for NPOV, at least in its broad outline. Slavs is ridden by a pan-Slavist POV, which doesn't make it an ideal article to point at for comparison. It contains nonsense such "Slavs are the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe"; it's new to me that present-day "Slavs" speak a single language. Same holds for Turkic peoples; culturally, modern Turks and Tuvans are each closer to their respective neighbors; shared linguistic history doesn't make them kin ethnicities. For Finno-Ugric peoples it is different, because there are no historical records about ancient "Finno-Ugrians". The only way to flesh out an article called Finno-Ugric peoples is to present a list-style panorama of diverse ethnicities speaking Finno-Ugric languages. WP wouldn't be worse off if the latter article didn't exist, because grouping ethnicities by language family is essentially an arbitrary cataloging system. –Austronesier (talk) 19:45, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

@Delasse: I see 2 things to consider:

1. Why should all these terms really be used in parallel ways? I do not think that is the case. What we have to do is work out how scholars use the terms, but in cases I am aware of like Celtic peoples and Slavic peoples the history is quite different, both of the peoples themselves, and the way the terms are used. To take an obvious example, the Germanic peoples were literally discussed by people who lived at the same time, but NOT based on language. This gives us a challenge because the modern definition has been mixed up (at least by some scholars) with technical discussions about Germanic languages. Finno-Ugric, or Indo-European are ONLY modern technical constructions based on language, which in a way makes them much easier to handle. In those cases we can attach speculations about the possible archaeological and genetic parallels to the main concept of a language family. In the case of Slavs, the peoples appear more recently in history, and their connection to the language family is also more straightforward (although there are some challenges). The term might even have always been language-based?

2. As mentioned by Austronesier, it could also be that some of those other articles need more attention. Apart from the obvious challenge which the now-rejected ideas of the 19th century give us, I have noticed that around the internet there is a newer movement in favour of categorizing peoples by their language family, and always trying to equate that to real genetics. (Perhaps the easier access we have to older books on the internet is playing an important role in reawakening old ideas.) To some extent perhaps genetic genealogy has triggered this. I think this is mainly coming from amateurs, and sometimes based on 19th century thinking or misunderstandings. Of course a people which speaks one language, in closely-related dialects, is a straightforward logical category, but language families can be very old and diverse, so it is often not clear that anything unites such peoples apart from their languages (which are best handled in language articles). --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:44, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier as you can see edit on Slavs page which you named was reverted by @Danloud even without explanation. There is clearly different policies for different articles and this is not good. Delasse (talk) 10:53, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Delasse: What? Do I now need to explain why I reverted your blatant vandalism? Have some common sense and learn about history, ethnic groups, and languages. Slavs are indeed the largest "ethno-linguistic group" in Europe. Just because Slavs are an ethno-linguistic group does not mean every Slavic ethnic group speaks the same language, there are three divisions among Slavs - East, West, and South. There is a huge difference between Polish and Russian. Learn the English language. Danloud ^(talk) 10:55, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Delasse: That's indeed bad. @Danloud: You should discuss this in Talk:Slavs. Talking about "common sense...history, ethnic groups, and languages", you'd ideally explain there by what definition present-day Slavic speakers make up an "ethno-linguistic group", rather than a collection of various ethnolinguistic groups speaking closely related languages. And you definitely should tone down. –Austronesier (talk) 11:12, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: @Delasse: Oh yeah? So if a some random user just casually removes stable content from an article, without any explanation or any discussion on the talk page, then pings me who reverted him, on a different article's talk page–I will be the one explaining there why he's wrong? Makes too much sense. You and him should start a discussion on the article's talk page, explain why what you believe is right, get proper consensus, and then remove the sourced sentence with pride. I did not dispute the legitimacy of the sentence, you both did. Thank you. Danloud ^(talk) 11:25, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe some people think I use talk pages too much but it amazing how little the talk page is being used on that Slavs article, given the nature of recent edits.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:45, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Germanic peoples revisited

Can someone explain this from the lead paragraph?

The terms Germanic peoples and Germani are used to avoid confusion with the inhabitants of present-day Germany, including the modern German people and language.[note 3]

Note 3 doesn't explain anything to me. I wonder how modern German exists if it has nothing to do with historical German. Perhaps the word "Historically," could begin the sentence. But you'd have to point out that there is an inherent confusion of terms because the Germans call themselves and their country "die Deutschen/Deutschland", etc. All a bit much for an introductory paragraph. It could say, "For the purposes of this article ..." or "In academic writing ..." Dynasteria (talk) 22:21, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

In modern English, the term Germanic is used over German in this context, as German refers to inhabitants of modern day Germany. Of course, modern day German is a Germanic language but so are English, Swedish, Yiddish, etc. It's a quirk of modern English that easily leads to a lot of confusion. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:53, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I've tweaked the sentence to make it more clear: "The terms Germanic peoples and Germani do not refer to the modern German people and language." --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:20, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Maybe it could help if we add in note 3 that until the 20th century (or until now—remember that IP? *sigh*), the Germani were often called "ancient Germans" or even simply "Germans" (if not "Teutons") in scholarly and general usage. In the current version of the note, this obsolete and potentially confusing usage is only attributed to Todd, which gives a skewed perspective of historical English terminology. It's also odd to see that we mention that German and French have distinct terms for Germanen/Germains and Deutsche/Allemands as if this were something special. Virtually all languages on this planet do so, only English is (or used to be) semantically defective here. –Austronesier (talk) 11:45, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the style of thinking. Concerning the confusion as it manifests here, you only need to look at the recent article history of Germans. I am however a bit concerned that we (including me, for sure) often end writing complex digressions which are essentially answers to every possible argument we expect. It is not exactly perfect to have such long footnotes in a lead, but they are there because of problems in the past. In turn this has led to people complaining that the lead now looks too scholarly etc. I also think we need to start to trim those a bit, and just handle those arguments when they come in the future? (At some point we have to hope we've stopped the problems of 2019, with constant additions of Luxemburgers, Afrikaaners and so on?) For my part I am therefore open to proposals but I'd be looking at them with that concern in mind. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:48, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Arminius vs. Hermann

Those pesky Germans are always getting things wrong aren't they? Here they insist on using a German name for one of their historical figures instead of a Roman one. Next thing you know they'll want us to say Beijing instead of Peking.

OK, let's concede that nobody knows what Arminius's birth name was. Nevertheless, I think it is incorrect to say that Germans "wrongly modernize" the name as Hermann. Even if the 16th-19th century innovation may have been ill founded etymologically, a nation has a right to name its own heroes. I suggest "interpreted as reflecting the name Hermann by Martin Luther" from the Arminius article. Dynasteria (talk) 21:55, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

This is the caption to the Hermannsdenkmal which, to me, seems out of place:

An event of the Young German Order at the "Hermannsdenkmal" monument to Arminius, in 1925. At the time, Germans learned to see Arminius (often wrongly modernized into "Hermann") as a "German".

It needs either more discussion or less. If more discussion, it should take place in the body of the article. Was Arminius not a German? Did Germans really "learn" about Arminius in 1925? If so, then why did they put up a memorial before that? Why is the word "German" put in quotation marks? Additionally, the assertions are made without attribution or citation. It seems a bit condescending and needs improving. Dynasteria (talk) 08:43, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Made a change.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:07, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Article POV

The first sentence of the Celts article strikes a radically different tone from the entire thrust of this article, which has been described above as deconstructing the concept of Germanic peoples:

The Celts are a collection of Indo-European peoples in parts of Europe and Anatolia identified by their use of the Celtic languages and other cultural similarities.

I strongly suggest a concerted effort be made to go through the article here and construct a genuine article out of what to me is blatantly slanted POV. The article works strenuously to tell the reader what the Germanic peoples were and are not, rather than what they were and are. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to make positive statements of fact. If anyone really has no idea what I'm talking about, I'll go through and find examples. As it is, the task of straightening out this article seems dauntingly laborious.

I would have suggested a section here on Germanic mythology but following that link I find a truly bizarre opening sentence:

Germanic mythology consists of the body of myths native to the Germanic peoples, they were Slavic, Latin, Greek and some Celtic-speaking communities in pre-Christian Northern Europe[1]—also known as Teutonic peoples.

Huh? No, sorry, Slavs, Latins, Greeks, and Celts were not Germans. But it sure does help to deconstruct an entire ethnicity if you can say they were just about anybody and everybody in the neighborhood. We don't, for example, say that the Iberian people were Moroccan and Basque despite their proximity. Dynasteria (talk) 21:35, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

The recent changes to the lead of Germanic mythology are really weird. But that's not "deconstruction", but rather betrays a CIR-problem of the novice editor who made the changes, and is totally unrelated to POV-issue of this article.

I think the main problem here is that "Definitions of Germanic peoples" is overly lengthy, and "Later debates" appears before the presentation of core facts (Classical subdivisions, History). The scope of Germani and thus what has to included in Germanic studies is matter of some debate, but nevertheless, Germanic peoples continue to be a coherent topic of modern scholarship, so the emphasis on the controversy at the very start is not ideal. It's like having "side effects" before "how to use" in leaflets of medical products. –Austronesier (talk) 07:35, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

OTOH, you could say that it is normal to have discussion about the latest terminology and basic definitions first, before discussions which use those definitions. Not only is that what we normally do, but with this topic there clearly is a tendency for visiting readers and editors to be arriving with older/unclear definitions already in mind. The most obvious one, just to put it out there, is the pressure to go back to define Germanic peoples on a linguistic basis, as part of the old model of ethnicities being in language trees. How do you avoid sliding back into that? Notes on other things:

• Concerning things like mythology, see my remarks in another section about languages. I honestly think this article will be much easier to reassess and restructure when we remove the main discussion about any bigger separable topics to other specialized articles. Of course they should be mentioned here somehow.
• Normally definitions need to explain what things are "not"?
• One problem we keep having on this talk page is that people make vague remarks about POV but don't give examples. I fear that many of them would completely disagree with each other about which things are supposedly biased. (Probably most are actually just thinking Germanic peoples should be defined in linguistic terms. Some others find it frustrating that the article keeps saying they are NOT, when this should be obvious.) In other words, my best guess is that this is a case of everyone disliking a compromise. Such problems are common and normally resolvable but we are not discussing them very clearly.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:40, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Concerning the Celts article I can see the attractions, but I also feel there are problems. The opening line quoted above defines them as "Indo European peoples". If you click on the link you get an article about Indo European languages. In the period of history under discussion, was there really any people or nation know as an Indo European people or nation? In other words, the implication of the sentence is that people's ethnicity can be identified by language family. Defining ethnicity by language, or even by mutually intelligible languages, is of course common and practical, and was also done by classical authors. But defining people by language families that only modern scholars can see the connections between is quite different.

In practice this probably does not cause much of a problem in the Celtic case. For example if you tweaked the sentence to say they were speakers of Celtic languages (which Romans treated as something still identifiable) and this is within the Indo-European family, then my technical concern would be resolved.

In the case of Germanic it is not quite so simple. The term does not seem to come from something people recognized themselves, but from geopolitical rhetoric, starting with Caesar. In this article we have to be able to deal in distinct ways with the original Germani originally on both sides of the Rhine whose linguistic category is unknown, the Germani from what is now Germany, who seem to have been Germanic speakers, and the Goths and other Ukrainian peoples who classical writers never ever called Germanic, and some modern authors also do not call Germanic.

The Celts article structure is a bit like our Suebi article, which covers the least controversial "core" part of the Germanic peoples concept, both in terms of being Germanic speaking, and known to both modern and ancient writers as Germanic. Potentially we could link better to that article? It could also do with some work.

I also think we should avoid, for example, just adding a note at the end of the article to say, in effect, "by the way, many scholars in this field would actually disagree with everything above".

I have not checked it much, but has the Celtic article not had much trouble with people wanting to make it about modern groups? That has been a big issue here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me the article kind of has to acknowledge somewhere that six modern nations in Europe speak a Germanic language and historically are descended from Germanic peoples. Perhaps it's unfortunate that there is a country named Germany (in English) and of course there is no country named "Celtia". As far as determining POV, one place to start would be by recognizing that relying on Greco-Roman definitions and observation is a little like asking the 16th century Spanish to write the history of the Aztecs: there may actually be a grain of truth among all the misinformation, but it's hard to tell which is which. Contemporary accounts are almost all we have but we also have archeological, anthropological, and genetic evidence, plus linguistic reconstructions. It would be important to clarify that the big divide among northern Europeans historically is among the Celts, the Slavs, and the Germans. The time and place of origin for these three are lost in prehistory, but they could still be pinned down a bit. Another form of POV is stating that so-and-so never used the term "Germanic" or that the people themselves never had a universal term for themselves. The Italians probably militate against the idea of calling themselves "just like the Spanish". Dynasteria (talk) 13:06, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

No, that's not a POV. It is really what expert sources say. The concept of Germanic peoples is different from some other classical groups in that respect. The evidence actually suggests that the term had an artificial origin lumping together peoples who probably originally had nothing to do with each other.

I have a different type of concern about your opening lines. I strongly oppose the idea of describing the Germanic peoples as the ancestors of any 6 specific modern European nations, and I don't see what problem this would solve. From past discussions and research, that can't be coming from good scholarly sources, and least of all from anyone who has ever thought about how population dynamics work in a small region like Europe. If we use a broad definition of Germanic peoples (including anyone who spoke a Germanic language) it is mathematically basically impossible for any modern European not to have a significant part of their ancestry from such peoples. But DNA spreads in a very different way to languages. Languages can switch back and forth. Whole parts of Europe switched from Germanic to Slavic and back to Germanic for example, without any necessary major change in population. Are such regions Germanic or Slavic? Trying to define ancestry as "Germanic" or "Slavic" on some other basis is even more speculative. As people who've been watching this article for some time will remember, the whole idea of having to decide such things is wrong to begin with, and even allowing compromises on this always spirals out of control.

I think this article has to be about a set of peoples from classical history. All previous RFCs etc have agreed. Technically, we could consider adding "classical history" to the article title, but we've never found good modern scholarly sources about modern Germanic peoples. Funnily enough, there really are peoples who identify as Celtic today, but the Celtic article does not seem to get distracted with modern claims. I don't see any claim there about which modern nations have Celtic DNA, but maybe I did not look hard enough?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:56, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

It isn't clear to me why the article must have such a narrow focus given the broad nature of its theme. I will have to read through the archived discussions (some of which were placed there in the last few of days) and get up to date on these issues. However, I would caution against relying on experts who themselves are pushing a POV. Having achieved an age where my cynicism is earned rather than merely adopted, I tend to say that an expert with a POV is a redundancy and a dispassionately objective expert is either an oxymoron or a fallacy. In my opening line in this section I misspelled "tone" (now corrected) when that was really my main point. The tone of this article is wrong-headed. It comes across to me as negative. There were several people here very recently objecting strenuously to the article's overall direction and character. It would seem incumbent on the editors to work towards consensus.

But you could help by explaining why the ancestors of today's Germanic language speakers were not mainly Germanic peoples. I consider myself part of that group going back a couple of generations, so it is of personal interest to me--and several hundred million other people out there. Dynasteria (talk) 18:23, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Your stated approach is not compatible with Wikipedia's mission. Everyone has a POV. It is NOT our mission on WP to chose the best POV, let alone to filter out POVs (which would be impossible), only to report the ones that managed to get the most recognition in the relevant field.

Concerning the ancestors of today's Germanic language speakers, I think you should re-read what I said. No one is denying that classical Germanic peoples have descendants today all over Europe. Of course they do, just like the Celts do. What is frankly ridiculous is the idea that we should publish essays here based on the assumption that the ancestry and/or ethnicity of Europeans today is simply a question of the language family which modern linguists say our main language is in. This is not just something scholars don't say. It is just self-evidently illogical. I've tried to explain it above, but I think you'll need to think it through. It is literally a case of doing the maths. Europe is a small peninsula in the greater scheme of things, and all over that peninsula everyone shares all the same ancestors in the classical period. There will be a point where pedigree collapse is so great that your set of ancestors in a certain generation is the same as the whole population of Europeans with descendants at that time. The classical period is a long time ago.

Languages, OTOH, come and go in each region depending upon economics and politics, but survey after survey, both modern and ancient DNA, shows that in every region Europeans are most closely related to whoever they live near, no matter what language they speak. (Cases which DON'T match that pattern are of course interesting. But they are rare.) Austrians are closer to Czechs than to Lowland Scots, and Flemings are closer to Walloons than to Norwegians, who are closer to Finns than to Swiss Germans.

Trying to distil the relevant bit for WP core content policy: there is no scholarly literature which tries to define which countries in modern Europe are the "true" descendants of the Germanic peoples (or Celtic peoples), which ones partial and so on, and so we have nothing to say on that. Such discussions appear on internet forums (and used to appear in Nazi literature and correspondence, for example when Hitler and his top advisors where you can see similar speculations about who is more pure, and who has a mixture) but these are not sources we can use here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:16, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

I understand the concept of people moving around and of pedigree collapse. I'm not in favor of publishing essays. And no one said anything about racial purity. But that spectre of the Nazis may have something to do with how the article has been set up. I do appreciate your statement that the experts WP uses are the ones who managed to get the most recognition in their field. Again, I will go do some studying. Dynasteria (talk) 19:46, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

OK. The point about the Nazis is not meant to compare any editors to Nazis, but to emphasize that it is worth looking into the logical problems here. In population genetics there is mixture, but there are no fixed points, so to speak, because there are no pure races. There are only more or less isolated or non-isolated sets of people. Everything is relative. In the position of a "race" is now only a network of interbreeding, partly isolated groups, that can be as big as suburbs of Reykjavik or the whole of Europe. Each person is in lots of these groups at the same time, and the sets are changing. However, it is very tempting to look for fixed points when people are having casual discussions, and it is very tempting to base these on things like language families. Whenever people start arguing about whether a group of people is Germanic or Celtic in their ancient ancestry, which is a false dichotomy, they are thinking in terms of absolute reference points, or in other words, pure races which represent a kind of ideal in any such discussion. In fact the classical Celtic and Germanic peoples, who covered large, similar swathes of Europe, are the ancestors of all Europeans and so that type of purity concept is leading people down a dead-end path.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:57, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Dynasteria maybe one small point you might be looking for, on the language front: Were Gothic and West Germanic mutually intelligible in classical times? For example, starting in the 3rd century when Goths appear on the Roman frontier, Shapur I described the Roman forces from all over the empire as made up of Germani and Goths. (I don't think anyone disagrees that by this time, these two groups were associated with specific languages. In the case of the Germani, this was an early form of what we now call West Germanic. Medieval writers still recognized West Germanic as a thing and called it teutonicus or thiudiscus. Only modern writers extend all terms sometimes to Norse or Gothic, which are quite distinct.) It is the linguists and philologists such as Dennis Green who keep insisting the answer is no: already in classical times Gothic was too different from West Germanic. The two groups came from vastly different places, but will have had contact in the military, and may well have recognized some similarities, but our scholarly sources have found no concrete evidence of this. There is speculation (mostly or maybe all from non-linguists like Liebeschuetz, in the context of arguing that the majority of scholars is wrong to stop writing about the Germanic peoples as one entity) but none of that speculation has led to academic consensus. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:52, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Austronesier and Dynasteria are raising valid points here. The structure of the article is incoherent, and there is an excessive focus on historical debates, with the article heavily favoring one side. The works of archaeologists and philologists are almost completely ignored. The text reads more like a polemic than an encyclopedic article. Krakkos (talk) 14:44, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes of course they are raising valid points. Improvements are definitely needed. But I am not sure at all whether any two people are raising the same points yet. (Or... would be pleased by the same changes to the current compromise.) I think your own remarks are going in a third and different direction, because I have no idea which archaeologists and philologists you are talking about. Actually, I would have thought that the opening discussions about the complexity of the term are philology based, so some editors are asking for less philology? I also don't agree that these issues are just things in the past. This article is literally about a topic where almost all the main authorities currently writing have special discussions opening their works, explaining all the different ways they avoid the term, or the reasons that they don't. Heather, for example, uses the Latin word, but gives it a new meaning (Germanic speaking). Several experts avoid the concept entirely. So I mentioned above that one challenge we have here is to avoid having an article which has a section at the end which says that everything written above is actually disputed by experts on the topic. That would be worse.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:04, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

By the way, @Krakkos: Dynasteria raised a good point about a common Germanic culture. Was there a common culture? Were Goths more like Franks than like other Scythians in any way other than language? Of course there is no academic consensus, but we want to report all sides in any mainstream controversy. We have an article called Germanic culture which seems to have had problems defining itself, and an article called Early Germanic culture which is basically rough notes and WP:SYNTHESIS. I am not sure why these are not merged, but I know you have said in the past that you'd make a proper article. How was that going? It could help. I think that determining how to structure this article here partly depends upon which subjects we can separate out to other articles, whenever they are complex in their own right. Large articles are always difficult. This is not an ironic question. I know there is serious material such as the work of Dennis Green. You often write as if others are stopping you from representing their work, but I just think it is not what you are really interested in? I know Alcaios was interested. To be honest I learned a lesson from your splitting out of discussion about the Name of the Goths, from Goths which is now a decent article that has also been a step forward for the main article. I was very nervous when you did that, but in all honesty it worked and I think if we are careful there are more opportunities to improve long controversial articles this way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:53, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Structure

@Austronesier: I would like to try to get some less vague ideas on the table. Looking at your comments so far, are you thinking of something like this?

• Begin with a single general definition section, perhaps a little bigger than the current "General" one.
• Rearrange all of the rest of the article into a chronological format, which covers not only events in that period, but also reports which imply changes to how Germanic peoples were seen.
• Medieval situation and modern debates in sections at the end, also chronological.

I have been looking at this type of idea, also in the past. In theory, there are a lot of ways to restructure. Challenges:

• Will readers have to look through the article to reconstruct a discussion about how to define the topic of the article?
• Do we really want to keep the same level of detail, and indeed repetition, which we have in all sections? I have found it a challenge to see a way to do this which is matching what everyone wants. That is why the article still has a connection to the problems of 2019.

One of the problems we always face so far is that there are several sections near the top which have evolved from the specific interests of different editors, and which partly cover similar information from a different perspective. A classic example where there has been good friendly discussion recently is the very big section on Germanic languages. If all or most of these were fitted into a single chronological discussion things might be neater, but it would also break things up in complex ways. To me it seems any real solution must involve more shortening of such sections. Historically, I did a lot of shortening, with the stated aim of us moving main discussions to more articles. I slowed down with that idea, and since then things tended to get re-expanded. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:22, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

do we need a roll-back?

To avoid continuing the editing back-and-forth, I post here. Here is a comparison of the current article to one from about a day ago before the current round of edits by what I take to be less experienced editors. [10]. I don't think we are going anywhere? But differences we now seem to be stuck with include:

• The article title in the opening line is now italic instead of bold.
• Northern European is now capitalized.
• These words are being insisted upon, although they clearly do not parse logically: "the inhabitants of modern day Germany, including the modern German people and language".
• Repeated removal of the word "historical", and insertion of the word ethnic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:05, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I've undone these changes made without consensus. Carlstak (talk) 11:46, 6 July 2021 (UTC)