Some opinions about Romanian ethnogenesis

The origin of the Romanians has been for centuries subject to scholarly debate,
often driven by political bias. Two basic theories can be differentiated; one theory
posits Daco-Romanian continuity and the other is an immigrationist theory, but
interim views also exist. Scholars of the first school argue that the Romanians are
mainly descended from the Daco-Romans, a people emerging through the
cohabitation of the native Dacians and the Latin-speaking Roman colonists in the
Roman province of Dacia north of the river Danube. Accordingly, they suggest that
a significant part of the territory of modern Romania has continuously been
inhabited by the Romanians' ancestors. Followers of the opposite view argue that
the Romanians' ethnogenesis commenced in Moesia and other provinces south
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of 1, 2, 3

the Danube. Consequently, they propose a northward migration of the Romanians

across the river.
Theories on the Romanian's ethnogenesis
Romanians, known by the exonym Vlachs in the Middle Ages, speak a language
descended from Latin which was once spoken in south-eastern Europe. Inscriptions
from the Roman period prove that a line can be drawn through the Balkan
Peninsula, which separated the Latin-speaking northern provinces, including
Dacia, Moesia and Pannonia from the southern regions where Greek remained the
predominant language. Eastern Romance now has four variants, which are former
dialects of a Proto-Romanian language. Daco-Romanian, the official language of
Romania, is the most widespread of the four variants.Speakers of the Aromanian
language live in scattered communities in Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and
Macedonia.Another two, by now nearly extinct variants, Megleno-Romanian and
Istro-Romanian, are spoken in some villages in Macedonia and Greece, and in
Croatia, respectively. The exact place where these idioms developed has for
centuries been debated by scholars because there is "a certain disaccord between
the effective process of Roman expansion and Romanization and the present ethnic

configuration of Southeastern Europe".Political and ideological considerations,

including the dispute between Hungary and Romania over Transylvania, have also
colored these scholarly discussions. Accordingly, theories on the Romanian
homeland can be divided into two or more groups.
Theory of Daco-Romanian continuity
Followers of the continuity theory argue that the Romanians descended from the
inhabitants of "Dacia Traiana", the one-time province encompassing some regions
of present-day Romania for around 165 years. In these scholars' view, the close
contacts between the autochthonous Dacians and the Roman colonists led to the
formation of the Romanian people because many provincials stayed behind after
the Roman Empire abandoned its territories north of the Danube. Thereafter the
process of Romanization expanded to Maramure, Moldavia and other neighboring
regions due to the free movement of people across the former imperial borders.
The spread of Christianity also contributed to the process, since Latin was the
language of liturgy among the Daco-Roman.

Although for a millennium migratory peoples invaded the lands now forming
Romania, a sedentary Romance-speaking population survived. These lands
remained the main "center of Romanization" after the Slavs began to assimilate the
Latin-speaking population of the Balkans in the 6th century. Even so, the Slavs had
a major impact on the Romanians' ancestors who adopted Old Church Slavonic as
their liturgical language.

Immigrationist theory
Gottfried Schramm, Herbert J. Izzo and other scholars who support the
immigrationist theory propose that the Romanians descended from the Romanized
inhabitants of the provinces to the south of the Danube, which were under Roman
rule for more than 500 years. Following the collapse of the empire's frontiers
around 620, some of this population moved south to regions where Latin had not
been widely spoken. Others took refuge in the Balkan Mountains where they
adopted an itinerant form of sheep- and goat-breeding. Their mobile lifestyle
contributed to their spread in the mountainous zones.

The Romanians' ancestors came into close contact with sedentary Slavic-speaking
communities in the 10th century at the latest. They adopted Old Church Slavonic
liturgy in the First Bulgarian Empire, and preserved it along with their Orthodox
Christian faith even after their northward migration across the Danube began. They
were first employed as border guards along the southeastern frontiers of the
Kingdom of Hungary and later settled in other sparsely inhabited regions as well.
Although sheep-breeding remained their principal economic activity for centuries,
their permanent settlements are also documented from the 1330s.