NOT "ROME'S DESCENDANTS," BUT RATHER

NOT "ROME'S DESCENDANTS", BUT RATHER... VICEVERSA!

First of all, I'd like to be honest in confessing to everybody that none of the following hypotheses, to be unrolled under your eyes, has yet been supported by any official historical or circumstantial evidence. Each of these might nevertheless be eventually confirmed, as well as denied whenever some new discovery or fresh approach would happen to match one or another pattern. I can only assert that, throughout the entire stuff hereby, no theory about which I shouldn't personally be convinced of hasn't been introduced. My reasons in sketching such an introductory opening come from being indeed persuaded that any reader must not be deceived or led to believe that I might actually "know" more than what I have really written down here. A non-professional, yet informational thirsty reader has the right to become aware of actual, true limitations surrounding the so far accumulated knowledge upon our country's past. Still, Romania itself clearly remains, to all its emigrants along the last decades, a country of birth to which we shall always spiritually belong, no matter the lands where any of us might have later settled under a personal destiny's guidance. Therefore, you may consider yourselves as cordially invited to use "presumption of innocence" on the underneath article, leading to a "suspension of disbelief" along your own, personal judgment upon everything to be shown.

The Author

***

Many years ago, during those times when I was still a pupil in the elementary course, inside our every Romanian Language schoolbook we were (also) told, along the essential grammar chapters, about some little Latin influence upon the nowadays' Romanian current vocabulary, besides an "overwhelming" Slavonic one, by comparison. It was probably for the first time in my life when I have strongly felt disagreement with what had been written in the book. Luckily enough, I had been compelled, as most other youngsters were, in studying Russian from as early as the fourth grade and, beginning with the fifth one, to start learning French as well, as a second language, discovering thus quite a lot of Romanian- French correspondents, yet not even a single Romanian-Russian related notion! Moreover, what had been really unfortunate for the Soviet "think-tanks" of that period, consisted in the numerous Italian songs, which happened to penetrate everywhere inside communized Romania and whose words were sounding so close to ours, that the theory of our so called "Slavonic descent" looked ridiculous even to a child in Grammar course.

As the years went by, the large initial Russian indoctrination process towards Romanian population gradually decreased in intensity as I was completing my senior year in high school. By this time, things had reversed themselves with 180 degrees and we were now learning about Romans occupying ancient Dacia, civilizing us thereafter and providing descent, in the long run, to the Romanian nation of modern times; for now, we were to have supposedly originated either from the former, or from the latter, or, why not, even directly from both "top leaders": the bravehearted Dacian King Decebalus and our so called "other ancestor", namely Emperor Trajan. Without knowing your opinion on the matter, I personally tend to distrust most of these linguists and historians always prepared to adjust our History according either to their own private interests, or political goals aimed at by their real "masters", as it is also happening today within the so called "MOLDAVIAN REPUBLIC" (actually a ROMANIAN LAND, called for many centuries BESSARABIA), or BUKOVINA and the HERTZA REGION, where the Romanian majority living over there was once tried in being deported and spread all over Siberia, a subsequent failure making room to other Russification efforts against this majority. Nowadays, they are constantly being told to speak a quite different language from ours, namely Moldavian, one of clear Slavonic roots, until some of these estranged Romanians eventually DO come to believe in the above propagated "theory".

However, an accurate observer shouldn't also lose sight on our Greek friends perception of things, namely how they keep telling our Macedonian (that is, Aromanian) brothers to be, in fact, of pure Hellenic descent and that the MACEDONIA REGION has always been a part of Greece, since Alexander "the Great" himself (also known as Alexander "the Macedon") would have been of same quoted origins!

A major turning point during my life-long continuous search for Romanian true national identity, was to happen while I was already attending Medicine College and had been invited to spend a few sizzling summer vacation weeks at a Hungarian fellow student's house in Tirgu-Mures, a cool city buried within the Transylvanian Plateau's most beautiful hillsided zone. Inside his home, I found the one and only Romanian language written book that he had cared to own, namely a work having been titled "The Prehistoric Dacia" by its author, Professor Nicolae Densusianu, who was probably during that period's foremost living authority on Romanian nation's early factual history. On this (unexpected) reading opportunity, all my views regarding our past, and which had repeatedly been instilled in me throughout the earlier school years, got turned around, indeed, by another 180 degrees!

Should we now go back to the official communist versions regarding both Romanian history and our language's genesis, moreover, to their striking logical contradictions , I would like to make use of some significant verses belonging to a poem written by Vasile Bajenaru, and which I managed to obtain (at the right time, though) courtesy of Mr. Jean Manescu from New York:

"What words were Dacians using, nobody got it later!...

For back then, poor guys, had neither pen nor paper

And spoken language 'flies', as everybody knows,

A teacher argued once, during her daily 'shows'.

The linguists calculated, as close as they could prove,

But only... 7-8 words, they said, were not 'to move'

Which seemingly belong to very Thracian language!

Still, even if the book says so, I can't approve this 'knowledge';

Let's stop and think a moment, how would it be possible,

With just a few words' 'package', to sound intelligible?..."

The above quoted poem had to be very accurately translated from Romanian, and it might regrettably have lost some of its genuine "spice" within the translation process, but I'm quite sure you've got the message. A fundamental question we have to ask ourselves today is: What language, or dialect did Geta-Dacians (namely Pelasgians, or Thracians) actually speak? And there can be no more than two answers, between which we can choose only one: either they had been using a totally different language than their future-to-be conquerors and were compelled, as a result, in learning some Latin after around 14% of old Dacian territory being conquered by the Emperor Trajan's Legions, in 106 A.D., or... the Dacian population's very native language had already proved so similar to Latin that any need to learn something "different" was unnecessary.

Getting once more back to Mr. Bajenaru's poem, could it really be possible that the entire inheritance left by our Geta-Dacian great-grandfathers should limit itself to such poor linguistic remains in modern times, of just 7-8 terms?... The years go by, the World we live in changes too, and nowadays we finally have a discipline called "LINGUISTICS ARCHAEOLOGY" at our disposal, only to discover that previous born disciplines, named "LINGUISTICS" or "HISTORY", haven't been so far anything more but an impressive agglomeration of errors. (See also... Shakespeare, with his "Comedy of Errors".) For over 200 years, since a certain W. Jones (1,786) had anticipated and asserted with unequaled precision that all Sanskrithian, Hellenic and Latin languages could have originated from a common mother-tongue, several brilliant minds forced themselves into reconstructing the assumed prehistorical linguistic basis in question, generating mainly two theories, each to support one different hypothesis: either the Indo-European ancient language on one hand or, on the other, the so called Aryan language which had supposedly rooted somewhere inside Prehistorical Europe.

The American researcher Marija Gimbutas, a senior professor at U.C.L.A. (the University of Los Angeles, California), states: "ROMANIA IS YET TO BE CONSIDERED THE CRADLE OF WHAT WE HAVE BEEN NOMINATING AS 'ANCIENT EUROPE',A VAST CULTURAL ENTITY ALREADY EXISTING BETWEEN 6,500-3,500 B.C., WHICH HAD ITS FOUNDATIONS BASED ON A THEOCRATIC, MATRIARCHAL SOCIETY, PEACEFUL, LOVING AND ART CREATING, AND WHICH HAD PRECEDED THE FOLLOWING PATRIARCHAL, WAR ORIENTED INDO-EUROPENIZED SOCIETIES OF WARRIORS ALL ALONG BRONZE AND IRON AGES. IT HAS ALSO BECOME QUITE OBVIOUS THAT THIS MOST ANCIENT EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION PRECEDES WITH A FEW MILLENIUMS THE ONE OF SUMERIANS, MAKING THUS SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE A HYPOTHESIS WHICH CONSIDERED THE WAR-ORIENTED, VIOLENT SUMER CIVILIZATION AS PRIMORDIAL ON PREHISTORICAL EARTH."

The Carpatho-Danubian Space is also one of few areas in Europe not to have been directly affected either by the Ice Age or the Alpine frozen cap, subsequently remaining almost entirely able to provide the most proper living conditions to humans, as well as animals and to abundant vegetation supporting their basic nourishment. Therefore, no life-threatening events should have occurred here anyway through time, in spite of some larger ice caps occasionally forming on several of the highest mountainous massifs, such as Rodnei, Calimani, Bucegi, Fagaras, Cindrel, Paring and Retezat. With this respect, the above unbiased conclusions of prestigious Cambridge University have established, as the sole possible "space" fully corresponding to conditions described within ancient Vedic literature, to be the Carpathian one, while a last-moment study of same provenience, entitled "THE ANCIENT INDIAN", places also THE PRIMARY PHASE (namely, birth) OF VEDIC CULTURE IN THE SAME CARPATHIAN AREA, nowadays known as... ROMANIA. In the end, according to above quoted British scholars, the "Carpathian fortress" makes an indestructible part of the "Aryans' primitive habitation".

From this theory, developed by the English specialists, let's now return again to the same V. Bajenaru's inspired poem on our language's controversial past:

"Historians, as well, in Rome have surely found

The legend of those twins who left the town spellbound:

Both Romulus and Remus a female-wolf had raised;

From them, as goes the story, the Romans' birth is said."

This idyllic version, having for its key-element a scenery of the above mentioned twins, abandoned only to be spotted floating randomly on Tiber River's waters by a merciful "she-wolf" had certainly been meant to touch our hearts, especially when being told, along recent decades, that we should consider ourselves a kind of "their descendants". Yet, if indeed so, should we really be proud of such a "fact"? Let's concentrate a bit upon seeing the little story in a different light: Rhea Sylvia, beloved sole daughter of the so called "Denominator" King of Alba Longa and, simultaneously, a vestal virgin within God Mars' Temple (Mars, namely the ancient Roman God of War), is said to have suddenly become pregnant "out of the blue Moon" with... Mars Himself and eventually delivers twin boys, after which her powerful uncle Amelia (apparently not "buying" her explanation) orders his servants to throw the bastards into the Tiber River. However, designated executioners would prove to have a heart and decide to better abandon both babies into a floating basket, going down the wild river's stream only to be, subsequently, found by a "She-wolf", designated through a term used, back then, for amoral women. Therefore, it appears much more plausible that a person of such condition might have indeed saved "our" legendary twins, while Fistulas the Shepherd brought them up, afterwards, to adults. Fantasies involving "God Mars" were not believed even by the sinful maid's uncle, so then why should WE give them any credit ? Does anybody consider that us, Romanian people, should really need looking forward to such... trivial origins?!...

"The Romans conquered Dacians, teaching them to cut beards-

And, more, gave 'Latin courses' during some hundred years!

I knew Dacians were brilliant, yet didn't take as scam

Their too-fast-learning version, and said: 'How good for them!'

But that they have forgotten, meanwhile, their previous dialect,

A whole vocabulary is, my friends, hard to accept!

It might be true, for nations, to gradually change habits

Or lose a few traditions, through History, as misfits...

Still, to 'forget' her language, not in a thousand years

Is such a thing to happen, unless she... disappears!"

The Roman armed Legions had apparently occupied only 1/7-th of overall Dacian territories (that is, as little as 14 %), and that only for a (relatively) short historical period, of exactly 165 years (106 A.D. - 271 A.D.). Within THEIR own homeland, the Italic Peninsula, there exist even nowadays dialects which are very different among themselves, alike Tuscan, Lombard, Calabrian or Sardinian ones, making it hard up to this very day, for traveling Italians, to understand one another. Moreover, the hundreds of additional minor Italian dialects -and it has been estimated that there would be around... 1,500 of them!- prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, the fact that even THE ITALIC PENINSULA ITSELF WAS NEVER ABLE TO BE ENTIRELY "ROMANIZED". How, then, is it possible to dare "explaining" that the ancient Empire would have managed to fully "romanize" Dacia?? Could we actually imagine the Dacian peasants, having their little settlements remotely spread all over high mountains and deep valleys, abrupt hills and virgin forests, coming out of wilderness to the plains and getting together, from a sudden eagerness in... "taking courses" on... the oppressor's Latin speaking? And that doesn't apply only to Dacians inside the limited, Roman occupied small region, but goes as well for Carps and Costhoboks, namely the numerous free tribes who represented a crushing majority of 86% from the overall Dacian population, living within unoccupied areas, who also hated Romans deeply and never tried to come in closer contact with these. How could we fancy a Dacian peasant, whose life expectancy came to only about 19 years and who had no books, no dictionaries, notebooks, pencils or professors, as being skilled in learning Latin so well that to ultimately create "the most grammatically correct of all Latin-born languages", something Latins themselves could never achieve inside their own homeland, the Italic Peninsula, until nowadays (when they might use a regimen of Grammar books, audio and videocassettes)?

Am I not right in revolting myself against those so called "teachers" who still indulge themselves into passing, towards younger generations, the same limited, inaccurate "theories" that they have once either learned, or didn't even bother to analyze during their own forming years? Yet, against all others who, from faithfully obeying mean, obscure higher geo-political reasons, struggle themselves to "teach" the newest Romanian generation at the end of this millennium on some different ethnical and linguistic origins than the ones which are obvious and sustained by blatant common sense? Why should we accept ignorance, not to say mystification intent to prevail and "peacefully" implant rotten seeds inside younger minds through a so called "training process"?

A similar (sad) situation with the one still existing inside the boundaries of "Mother-Italy", regarding a large number of various spoken dialects, may be encountered throughout several other Western-European countries, among them France, Spain, England and Germany, where residents of distant regions are able to communicate with each other only through a literary language learned in school, whereas their local home-assimilated dialect would make them incoherent across their own land. Anyway, in Romania the situation appears to be quite different, making it a singular exception to the rule, because the entire population living here can communicate even across some areas of various home-spoken dialects, all of them being most alike what is taught in schools, the literary form...

Let's close this debate by analyzing a second fundamental question, to be answered by every so called "historian" and "linguist" without good faith or genuine desire to accede Truth: How do you account for Romans to have achieved, in just 165 years and being far away (at approximately 1,500 kilometers) from Rome, performances which they weren't capable to accomplish within their own homeland?? And everything without a Roman "sandal" to have ever stepped over 86% of our country's ground!! Who should be, indeed, "quite" naive to believe it?! We, "descendants of Rome"?... Come on!

"Magyars kept Transylvania almost a thousand years,

Yet an oppressed Romanian majority was known

Not to give up their language, habits or clothes, from fears;

How, then, could Dacians do it, in ten times less, as 'shown'?"

The very genesis and existence of Hungary has to be, in fact, credited precisely to a long, peaceful cohabitation of Huns, the new barbarian settlers, with the local, hospitable Geta-Dacian population who were even to take constant efforts in providing to those helpful "know-how" in agricultural works and shepherd's training, only to gradually see herself as becoming oppressed , tyrannized and periodically butchered, everything, so to say, in the name of... all-mighty Catholicism. Many Romanian-Transylvanian aristocrats, in order to save their lives and riches, would have eventually converted to Catholicism and Magyarized themselves but, nevertheless, didn't forget their language, nor traditions. Why is it that, nowadays, we should believe in assertions that, whatever Hungarians couldn't achieve in as much as 1,000 years, might have been earlier accomplished by the Romans in approximately one century and a half ?... Otherwise speaking, how can we think that these would have succeeded to persuade not only a minority of hardly conquered Dacians, but also the overwhelming remaining 86% of "die-hard with a vengeance" free ones to learn "Latin" whereas, simultaneously, getting oblivious to their own "mother-tongue"??

"When Romans, led by Trajan, claimed Dacians were defeated,

At Sarmisegetuza, "...no translator was needed"-

Thus states Densusianu, things changing through his sentence:

It looks like Dacians, Romans, DID speak a common language!

How could this be possible? I'll tell it right away,

Should you provide some patience on what I have to say;

Long before our Era (how long? I couldn't guess),

Lived some hardworking people (as wrote, no more no less

The famous Herodotus) around the Ister River

And the Carpathian region, who used to hunt with fever,

Grow bees, plough or do farming, while in each major zone

These people were called Geta, and Dacians at home,

Still Scythians, or Illyrians- all fought barbarian 'winds'

And later got united under two glorious Kings... (namely, Burebista and Decebalus)

But, just centuries earlier, not having yet a Kingdom

The multitude of Thracians would split, and from such 'wisdom'

Some started huge migrations either to Western Europe

Or towards Southern areas, resettling full of hope

Whereas, at new locations, keeping intact good manners

As well as their own language, prevailing on new-comers,

And this explains, quite clearly, why so-called Latin language

Was understood by Dacians, each word and every sentence!

So, not with 'Rome' is starting our rich and glorious past,

Much earlier look for origins, and theory will LAST!!"

Should we now pay respect both to Mr. Densusianu's "Prehistorical Dacia" and to an earlier great Romanian historian, N. Iorga's capital work, "The History of Romanians", specifically to the latter's chapter entitled "Forefathers preceding Romans", it appears that a kind of "WESTERN ROMANIA" would have once existed, from which, afterwards, "...were to unroll nations like the French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese ones, and yet another similar space defined as 'EASTERN ROMANIA', whose remains were to survive up to modern times, within our country's present boundaries". And we should quote the same N. Iorga as saying: "It is every Romanian's sacred duty to become fully aware of his own History and to worship his nation".

A controversial aspect that seems to me of having been largely ignored by public opinion would be the following: if the above discussed "Western Romanity" has apparently evolved through next millenniums, developing herself into several "Latin-based" languages (such as late Latin, Italian, Spanish, Provencal, Portuguese and French), why is it that, throughout the parallel environment of "Oriental Romanity", the forming of some brand-new language didn't happen at all, but was to reach only a dialectal stage, namely Histro-Romanian (inside a so-called Serbian-Banat region, now occupied by Yugoslavians), Megleno-Romanian (within the area dominated by Bulgarians), Aromanian (or Macedonian, into a large territory which Greeks later confiscated for themselves) and, finally, Dacian-Romanian (spoken inside today's Romanian frontiers), besides whatever should still be existing nowadays within large areas upon which Russians and Ukrainians took over "with an iron fist"??...

Nevertheless, the linguistic unity of all these dialects cannot have more explanations, but only one: THE ROMAN CONQUERORS HAD MET A LOCAL POPULATION SPEAKING... JUST THE SAME OLD LANGUAGE AS THEM. And, if today it is considered that some 95% of the Humanity's accumulated knowledge has been gathered through scientific research over the last 50 years or so... let's also take a look upon how History itself may, sometimes, be subject to change without notice. When, not long time ago, the theory of human species' evolution according to chromosomal age was at last published, an immediate conclusion has been drawn upon the "first woman" 's whereabouts, apparently being located somewhere inside the South-Eastern part of Africa. A next giant step is said to have been made within the ancient Northern Egypt whereas, from here, the next evolutional milestone is to be found inside the Balkan Peninsula, that is... to us! When those people from Cambridge were talking about Prehistorical Aryans from the Carpatho-Danubian zone, the chromosomal theory had not yet shown up. And, once more, they say, it is also "from us" that two large genetic groups were to detach themselves afterwards and, should we detail it, the former was going to spread itself towards East, to Indo-Asia, while the latter would think as better migrating up to extreme Western Europe.

Should somebody "wake up" and resolutely check inside some dusty Roman archives, without omitting, as well, the Vatican ones, he would surely find the manuscript of Emperor Trajan's personal doctor, Criton, who was describing us, Geta-Dacians, as well. Seemingly he was the one who, after hearing the language commonly spoken by Dacian war-prisoners, is said to have exclaimed: "Why, are these (Dacians) Romans?" And, from then eversince, we were given the nickname of "Romans". Most certainly, we were going to be known as "Romans" after the year 106 A.D., when being partially conquered by the Roman Empire and compelled in "uniting" with this one for exactly 165 years. Moreover, when the great Roman poet Ovidius happens to be exiled and deported at Tomis (nowadays Constantza, on the Black Sea's Western shore), he would also write poems (and other stuff) in the Scyths' local dialect, actually in the very Thracian language, yet without abandoning at all the Latin alphabet; this only means that he had been capable of most easily accommodating himself to the local spoken "mother-tongue", thanks to an extraordinary resemblance with "his" own Latin back home. Unfortunately, this special collection of poems appears to be also lost somewhere inside the Vatican archives and nobody, till the present days, hasn't been "convinced" of the necessity to find it.

Once having established the important problem of Geta-Dacian language, we finally come to (proudly) discover not to be, in fact, "descendants" either from the Slavics or from the Romans, yet ...for them to actually constitute our descendants, through various ages!

With respect to the encyclopedic, universally respected early-century historian N. Iorga's works, repeated chemical analysis have shown, beyond any doubt, how over 30% of the ancient Pharaoh's gold would have had its provenience from... mines located into the Transylvanian Western Mountains' chain, and yet no one has "decided" himself, since then, to elaborate any study detailing the fact, in accordance with nowadays' tremendous technical potential. And, does anybody know that Spartacus, the famous ancient gladiator who freed himself only to assemble a huge army of hundred thousands former slaves and scare, at one point, even "the eternal city" itself had actually been a Thracian of ours, from the Rodophes Mountains?...

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF PELASGIANS, THRACIANS & GETA-DACIANS

The often quoted ancient Greek historian Herodotus shows that: "...after Indians, the Thracian people constituted the largest ethnicity among all the rest of World's races". Let us focus, a little bit, on this issue. In accordance with their geographical location, the first ones who slowly start "detaching" themselves are Geta-Dacians, during the first millennium B.C., throughout various Northern shores of Ister River (today's Danube), and then Illyrians (from the area to be later called Albania), Scythians (living, back then, within the Dobrudja region of modern Romania) etc. "We" gradually come to spread all around Europe, as well as inside the entire Balkan Peninsula, which "we" would then dominate for hundred and hundred years' time. Meanwhile, from around the Aegean Sea zone, including a myriad of islands among which the biggest one remains Crete, and simultaneously from within the Asia Minor area (today's Turkey) fresh cultures were to pop out, such as the Mino-Mycenian one. The Greeks, our later "Hellenic friends" (as only they like calling themselves), arrive also in Europe from as far as the Eastern banks of Caspican Sea, during the 1,900-1,600 B.C. interval, being thus, initially, a nomadic, tribal population. So they come in small groups, "tall blondes" according to the great ancient (blind!) poet Homer's afterwards description, followed, within some 300-400 years' range by the Dorians and then the Aeolian and Ionic tribes. All these were to find an ideal homeland again at "us", that is inside the Balkan Peninsula, whereas gradually "pushing" us aside towards its North-Western part and, later, naming us... Macedonians, Illyrians, Geta, Dacians, Scythians, with "respect" to our newly acquired residential premises, in spite of a commonly spoken language. No sooner had they penetrated inside the Balkan space than the Greek invaders, finding themselves at the beginnings of their own civilizational phase, would start to harshly impose over the local population and then destroy most of the old Aegean settlements, only to later absorb all the previous culture's major features. They were to "borrow" a lot from the Aegean culture, and also from Mino-Mycenian and Egyptian ones, gradually founding, as a result, their own characteristic civilization, namely the ancient Greek cultural thesaurus, whose influence would afterwards spread, in its turn, throughout the European continent. Not only culture was to be "borrowed", but writing and alphabet as well: while "Linear Script A", only partially deciphered, still maintains an hieroglyphical character, "Linear Script B" already represents a purely (archaic) Greek dialect that would just enable us in finding, some 700 years later, the so called earliest classical "Greek" writing!... Yet, today, not even one Greek would recognize any Egyptian merit in building up their culture, likewise for some other later times thieves, namely the Russians who, being helped by two Greeks bearing Slavonic names, Kiril and Metodius, were to succeed in transforming the old Hellenic alphabet into a Kirillian one, to be afterwards introduced to all the numerous Slavonic population...

The subsequent apparition of Romans was to indirectly lead towards an unification of all Pelasgians, Thracians, Illyrians, Dacians, Geta, Tybali and Odry's tribes, who took their later common name -as some people say- from the "eternal city" of Rome itself. As far as it can be seen, nobody would look able to tell exactly when and how we might have acquired the "nickname" of Romans. For, in the centuries to come, that is throughout the first half of first millennium A.D., a constant invasion of "barbarian waves", either attacking us from the East or just peacefully crossing through our territory on their way towards West, would prove to be repeatedly pushed back, if not eventually absorbed without leaving behind a significant influence, until the VI-th century A.D. when Slavians show up. A very barbarous race indeed, part of these cruel and ruthless tribes were to later settle along all Southern Danube's region (after failing, of course, to conquer its Northern shores), separating us forever, in this way, from our brothers living to the farther South side within the Balkans, and who would find themselves literally "trapped" between Greeks, residing at its extreme South and the "Slavonic corridor" established at its North. Yet, "we" are still existing, today, in these places: Histro-Romanians (only very few left), mostly inside the Croatian-Yugoslavian space, Megleno-Romanians, under current Bulgarian ruling and, last but not least, Aromanians (by far, the largest Romanian minority to be found anywhere), presently living under the Greek authoritarianism. Following several unsuccessful attempts of assimilation by force, even today, after almost 1,500 years of occupation, the so called Macedonians haven't "forgotten" or changed their language and traditional vestimentation, whereas, regarding the language itself, neither Greeks nor Bulgarians or Yugoslavians would be able to understand whatever they are talking about, except for... us, Romanian people. Why is it so?... Almost all of us have friends or acquaintances who are "Macedonians", and, should you not have thought of asking them before, right now it would be the right moment to do it: question them upon the "dialectal" issue and you shall be amazed upon its similarity to the everyday Romanian language. Yet, their "mother-tongue" is actually the eldest and best preserved of both, consisting in remains of Prehistorical Pelasgian (Thracian, Dacian, you choose to name it) vocabulary, which also provides our... very own Romanian language's direct origins. And, should we still remind ourselves that, some 2,000 years ago, ALEXANDER "THE GREAT" himself, son of Philip, King of Macedonia, was rejected from the Olympic Games on grounds that he wouldn't have been a Greek and that, at the age of 7, his parents had brought him Aristotle, the great philosopher, as personal trainer (Aristotle being born from a Greek father and Macedonian mother) in order to teach him the Hellenic language, as required by his Era's only flourishing civilization... how could we believe that even ALEXANDER MACEDON, whose last name was to become overshadowed by "the Great" and a first-hand hero to be later enlisted into the Greek Pantheon, would have been... a Greek? While he was, in fact, of the purest Pelasgian descent...

Such theoretical opinions upon the origins and whereabouts of Macedonians are shared with many others, besides myself, for instance with Mr. Raymond Bonner who, along his "New York Times" chronicle of May 14-th, 1995, talks about the Macedonian land as "being condemned not to bear its own name" (see "The Land That Can't Be Named") since it has been much too long disputed among Serbians, Greeks and Bulgarians. Bonner also reportedly thinks that Alexander Macedon was "anything but Greek".

Paradoxically, the only ones not to have been involved in revendicating Macedonia were its own brothers from the North, and that means US, Romanians, guilty of shamefully neglecting and then abandoning the Aromanian population on almost every major historical occasion. Still, a political precedent appears to have been finally established through 1995, when an official Romanian delegation visiting Albania was to advocate as well as initiate, in full cooperation with the Albanian government, the opening necessity of first Romanian Orthodox Churches and Romanian language teaching schools for local Macedonian community. Let's not forget, therefore, such an unprecedented gesture's value in helping us to establish a truthful etnical distribution over there, whereas always remembering how most "other" Romanian churches and schools, existing during the pre-World War period on Greek territories, were afterwards to be either burned down or dismantled to pieces, and many of those Greek-Aromanian individuals subject to harassment, prosecution, sometimes even "cleansing" or brutal compelling to seek refuge in the "New World" (or somewhere else abroad, away from their homeland).

Should we, direct descendants of Pelasgian people, of Thracian people, now hurry towards drawing the conclusion to be subjects of some "historical curse"?... Until when should we limit ourselves just to keep telling younger generations about the Past's misfortunes and sorrows? (And there have been so many...) How long would it take for Romanians from Romania, Bessarabia, Bukovina, Hertza, Serbian-Banat, Cadrilater, Buceag, Pocutzia and Hungary, as well as from the entire Macedonia, altogether, to finally stop "kneeling" and stand up in defending some of their most elemental human rights? Only God knows. homeland).