So what happened to RTWs factions in history?

[Kraxis]

The Gauls mixed with the Romans. That can be attributed to many things, but th Romans were not very kind to the celts culture and persecuted it, both with civil powers as well as military power.
In any event they became Gallo-Romans, and they gave a lot of men to the later empire days when it seemed there were invasions into heir lands on a daily basis. Various germanic tribes settled in their lands either for a while or more permanently. Visigoths came first and took the entire southern France. They stayed while more of them took over in Spain. They eventually got overthrown by others. Ostrogoths held parts of eastern France, they too stayed put but got conquered. Vandals 'passed by' but left enough people so that the area got a new influx of blood. Meanwhile in the north the Franks took over and eventually took over the south as well. They created the current state of France as well as their language by adopting the local language (with certain temrs still being in Frankish) and culture but held on to their own law and social structure.
Brittany as the name implies is a bit of area settled by peoples from Brittania. It seems the Saxons kicked the celts out so hard that some of them said "screw it all I'm going over here". And so it happened that celtic culture and language survived in Brittany.

Germania was never a single unity. Most likely the many tribes didn't consider each other similar, bur rather saw the others as they would see Rome or Greece, another player on the field.
What happened was that the Vandals, that came from the interior of Germania marched out, the rest is history. The Teutons were also Germanians. So were the Saxons (though they came from the north, where the province is in both MTW and RTW) just to th north of the Saxons were the Angles, they lived at the inner shore of the southern part of the Jutland peninsula. The Goths on the other hand seems to have come from the Scandinavian peninsula (Götaland in Sweden seems to be a good candidate for the homelands), it is even mentioned in their own history, fom there they spreat out, to Gotland and Poland, from there down to the Black Sea. Then came the Huns and they marched into Raman territory. The result was an Ostrogoth state in Italy and a Visigothic state in southern France and Spain.

The Spanish got subjugated by Rome... And it wasn't until the Vandals and Visigoths crossed through that a foreign army entered again. By then the locals had long been romans. Most of the local iberian, celtiberian and celtic cultures were dead, all but the basques it seems (don't know about the catalans). Well the Visigoths stayed and created their own kingdom that lasted until the arabs invaded in 711.

The Scythians are an enigma. Little is known about them or what happened to them, but everything seems to indicate that they unlike every other group migrated east. Possibly boosting the Pathians along the way so they could do their bid for power. A recent discovery has been made were the most impossible of odds have been overcome. The mitochondrial DNA from a female warriorgrave in Russia (a Scythian) has matched up perfectly with that of a blondehaired Mongol girl. Chances are that they got quite far east.

The Seleucids got gutted at Magnesia, but the romans only took part of their territory for the moment. The parthians took most of the rest, but lost it again to the romans. Seleucia was taken and converted into the Parthian capital of Ctsiphon.

[econ21]

Thanks, guys - great stuff. In a way, the responses reminds me even more of "1066 and all that", specifically that book's subtitle "the decline and fall of practically everybody".

I guess we know quite a lot about changes in terms of politics, language and culture. What is intriguing at a human level are the physical population movements and shifts - e.g. the what happened to the Britons when the Anglo-Saxons moved in etc? The kind of DNA evidence Kraxis mentioned about the Scythian/Mongol is fascinating.

[Kraxis]

The kind of DNA evidence Kraxis mentioned about the Scythian/Mongol is fascinating.

Wehn I saw that one National Geo, I was almost disbelieving it. Such odds are crazy. Add it up and it is more likely to get killed by micrometeoriod...
But those two persons are in fact directly related. The girl is most likely an ancestor of that woman (or her sisters).

[nokhor]

ancient peoples got around a lot before the modern era of strong national gov'ts.

the vandals went from central europe to africa, carthahagnian merchantmen traded in britain and may have circumnavigated africa as well as reached america. there are ancient chinese legends about them fighting chariot wielding red-haired giants in the tarim basin (northwest china) which if there's any basis to it, might have been displaced celts. the chinese themselves got as far as madagascar during their only real age of naval exploration. and there is some archeological evidence to suggest trade routes between sumeria and pre-alexandrian india.

[Accounting Troll]

The Britons never had any kind of real unity against the Romans, who were often able to play the numerous British tribes off against each other during the Claudian invasion. The leaders of a tribe that embraced the Romans, such as the Atrebates, tended to become members of the Romano-British aristocracy and their tribal capital is known to have thrived during the Roman era.

The Anglo-Saxons replaced the Romano-British aristocracy in eastern Britain, but they had no interest in committing 'ethnic clensing' against the peasants unless there was a rebellion because who would then do all the work? Like the Normans, they were a ruling elite who imposed their own language and culture onto the peasants. Thus the English are predominantly of Romano-British stock, just like the Welsh.

[nokhor]

how big was the roman emigration into britain? i would assume it would be similar to the normans. with basically elites just replacing elites, so that the english would primarily then be of mostly just british stock?

[The Wizard]

What happened was that the Vandals, that came from the interior of Germania marched out, the rest is history.

What exactly do you mean by this?

If you mean that the Vandals started the Great Migrations, you are wrong. The Great Migrations were not started by anyone in particular, but there were two peoples that perhaps inspired, and certainly influenced other tribes in their migrating.

These were the Marcomanni and the Quadi, which put an enormous amount of pressure on the Romans to drive them back from where they came (to the north of the Rhine-Danube frontier). These were the so-called Marcomannic wars, because of which Marcus Aurelius became so famous, and the scenario of the movie Gladiator.

These peoples, these Suebians, were the first peoples to highlight the biggest weakness of the Roman empire. Breach the frontierline, guarded by the legions garissoned there, and there is nothing to stop you after it. That was one of the main reasons that the Roman army went through a couple of reforms which led to the demise of the old, heavy legions garissoned at the frontiers of the empire, in favor of more mobile field armies. Tactically, these new legions were the lessers of the old ones, but stragetically they had their advantages.

Some historians believe that the Marcomanni and Quadi were the inspiration for the later peoples of the Great Migrations, the ones that opened the floodgate which the Romans could not close anymore.



~Wiz

[Kraxis]

I never said they were the first... I made a reference to what I had written earlier and what others had written on Carthage. I just didn't want to post something redundant.

[noramis]

Wehn I saw that one National Geo

Which month / year is that? Seems very interesting

[Kraxis]

It was on quite recently... A month or so ago. But I didn't get the show's name as I just sumbled onto it. But it is about this one woman who is searching for the Amazons (Scythians), she goes all about the world. Germany, Russia and Mongolia (and not just Ulan Bator, she went into the deep highlands).

[Rosacrux redux]

Most of the factions in RTW are not nations, just artificial factions: The Seleucids ruled over a host of nations (maybe even 120 distinct ethnic groups) and the Ptolemeans over quite many themselves.

A rather interesting "mystery" in the annals of history are the Thracian. They seem to be one of those cultures that never made the shift to the AD years as a distinct cultural entity. They were heavily influenced by the Greeks pretty early on (Greek cities in Thrace date from the 10th century BC) and the Greeks ruled over them for quite a number of years. When the Romans settled in, they found a conglomerate of vastly hellenized Thracian tribes, and the latter seem to have adopted Greek customs and language so fully, that in the AD years there is no mentioning of a separate Thracian nation.

Pockets of the old inhabitants of Thrace, at least the mountainous Thracian, existed till the Slavic migration, but they were gradually absorbed into the dominant Slavic and Graeco-Roman elements in the days of the Byzantine Empire.

A number of nationalist Bulgarian historians are trying to claim the Thracians as their predecessors, but in truth the old Thracian blood must be present in the Greeks, Turks and Bulgarians of today's Balkans. Culturally though, they left no offspring. Today their former land is divided among Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.

[edited to add some more things abut Seleucids and Pontians]

Seleucids, as stated before, were a Greek house, not a nation. They ruled over many different nations and never managed (or tried) to install a common national identity among their subjects (the concept of national identity was anyway absent in those years). About what happened to their empire, others have already said their story. Todady their land is divided among many countries.

The Pontian "faction", was another diverse kingdom with many different nations as subjects. The cultural was predominately Greek (that is true for most of the "civilized" nations of the Eastern Med at this time) but the Greek population was only a small group. The ruling house was a hellenized Iranian house, and their subjects included various Anatolians. They too became vastly hellenized and consequently romanized (and in the end, those who survived and stayed put in their homeland, turkified). The kingdom of pontus made a reappearance after the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) to the Crusaders in 1204 AD, and lasted quite a long time against the Ottoman onslaught, but in the end was brought under the Osmanli umbrella.

Today the lands of Pontus belong to Turkey.

[MoROmeTe]

about Dacians...
after Traian took them over, there roughly 200 years of roman rule, in which the dacians were heavily influnced by the roman culture and especially the language. modern day romanian is a version of latina vulgaris, mixed with a small amount of dacian native tongue and with about 10 -15 % of it influenced by the slavs that came through here and by later influences like greeks (fanariots that ruled in the 19th century) and turks (that were in constant fights for the control of what is modern day Romania.
after the Aurelian Retreat, when Marcus Aurelius took all his troops from Romania and built a defensive position south of the Danube, there were romans (married to native women or discharged legionaries) that remained here.
although a lot of tribes from the migrations went through Romania, cross breding wasn't all that popular. maybe the fact that the dacians were quickly converted to Christianity (supposedly by the Apostle Andrew) as opposed to the pagan migrators was a factor. maybe the fact that there were still romans here might have contributed. i don't really know. there precious little info on the period between the years 400 and 900. it seeems that rural comunities, that werent tempting for migrators, subzisted and after 900 small kingdoms appeared.
i think, unlike others that were overrun or ioncorporated by other tribes, the dacians farred fairly well after the roman retreat. it's mainly the mix of dacians and romans that makes up the romanians, with some traces of maghyars, slavs, very few mongoloid influences and very few turk traits.
well, that's about it about the dacians...

[BalkanTourist]

"A number of nationalist Bulgarian historians are trying to claim the Thracians as their predecessors, but in truth the old Thracian blood must be present in the Greeks, Turks and Bulgarians of today's Balkans. Culturally though, they left no offspring. Today their former land is divided among Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey."

You don't have to be "nationalistic" to look at the facts. I am not trying to start another forum war with a Greek. Can't we all just get along?!
That the Thracians were colonized by the Greeks is true, but to an extend. There are many Greek colonies along the Black Sea coast: Mesembria (today's Nessebar), Apollonia, Sozopol, etc,but not that much inland. According to Herodotus (the father of History, yes he was Greek) the Thracians were the most numerous peoples in the World (the known world that is). The Dacians, Getae, Illyrians were all Thracian tribes. They populated all of the Balkans as well as Asia Minor. Acording to Herodotus again if they'd been united they would have been much stronger than the Greeks. The Greeks never managed to conquer them all, but the Romans did. And so they were subjects to the Empire until the Split. The Dacians were more Romanized than the rest and became to be the forefathers of today's Romania. The present day people of Karakachani (the origin of the name is definetely Turkish, but they date way back before the Ottoman invasion) which live in Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey today were ancestors of those Thracians that were culturaly influenced by the Greeks. And the Illyrians are the forefathers of today's Albanians, they mixed with no one and still don't.
After the slav invasion that started as early as the fifth century AD the Thracians found themselves as a minority among a "sea of slavs". The slavs were so numerous they reached southern Greece, Crete and the rest of the islands. The slavs and the Thracians were all subjects of the Byzantine Empire until the Bulgars were forced to migrate from their homeland of Great Bulgar in southeastern Ukraine and the Caucasus and split into five groups. One of those groups led by khan Asparukh left the Don and Danube deltas which were hard to defend and very swampy with lots of malaria and other nasty deseases and came down to Moesia, allied with the local Slavini and Anti and together defeated Constantine IV of Byzantium in 681 AD. The Emperor had sent an army to defeat the Bulgar intruders and to put down the rebelious slavs who were subjects of the Empire. The Thracians who had gradually migrated to the mountains (serving as mountain pass guardians or herders) or other remote areas or intermingled with the slavs had yet to play a role in the formation of Bulgaria. They allied themselves with the newly created union of Slavs and Bulgars and closed all the mountain passes cutting the way of the defeated Byzantine army headed back towards The Second Rome. That army never came back to Constantinople and Constanite, who had more troubles in Asia Minor and could not afford another one gave up on the idea of destroying that union. In later years shortly after the creation of Bulgaria the Thracians south of the Balkan mountains allied themselves with the Bulgarians and helped them gain land in Central and South Thrace (around Boruy or Beroe, present day Stara Zagora in Bulgaria and the Rhodopes mountains). So the tri-way union among Bulgars, Slavs (Anti and Slavini) and Thracians was made out of necessity against a common enemy - the Eastern Roman Empire. There are words in present day Bulgarian (which is mostly slavic) that are of Thracian origin. Also there are numerous artifacts and burial sites found on Bulgarian soil. Recently they found a golden mask of a Thracian ruler which is the oldest golden artifact found ever. It was all over the news and there was even a thread on here about it. I grew up 5 kms away from the Thracian palace and town where they found it - Perperikon in Eastern Rhodopes mountains near present day Kardzhali in southern Bulgaria. Spartakus was born in that area and so was Orpheus. And I am proud of it, but that doesn't make me "nationalistic". We (Bulgarians) believe that Thracians were our ancestors as were the Slavs and the Bulgars.
Of course no nation can claim its "purity". Many peoples passed though our lands - celts, goths, magyars, uzis, pechenegs, franks (cruzaders), cumans, tatars, turks, and I am sure all left some DNA, but the three major parts the present day Bulgarians are made of are Slavs, Bulgars and Thracians.
P.S. Sorry for the long post.
P.S. 2 To my Dacian friend above: To what extend did the Avar Khaganate influence the formation of the Romanians as a people. And what are the relations between Romanians and Vlas (Wallachians)?