Attila's brother wrote:
mako wrote:I'm sorry to tell you, but Hungarians are in no relation to the ancient Huns. That might be some myth of Hungarian nationalists but has nothing to do with reality. Ask any serious archeologist, historian or evolutionary anthropologist.
Unfortunately, you're not even a direct descendant of the original Magyars that came somewhere from Ural. Genetic tests have confirmed that modern Hungarian population is basically Slavic people, who were there before the arrival of Magyars and who adopted the Magyar language at some point.
I am keenly aware of the problems in ascertaining the lineage of modern Hungarians. I am also aware that you are correct about them/me having a strong Slavic genetic component.
But I wasn't talking about genetics, I was talking about cultural heritage. Nor would I exclude Slavs, or others nearby, from that heritage. What I said about some Hungarians applies absolutely equally to Slavs, Serbs, Croats, Ukranians, etc. IMO they all have a common cultural heritage, and the ethos (and sometimes practice) of the unwashed barbarian is still alive and well in all of those places.
Many feel that this is terribly "backward", and they may be right in the sense that it is almost certainly backward-looking. It is no accident that those areas of europe have not enjoyed the same modern economic prosperity as have other regions of europe. IMO this results from the fact that in some sense, they cannot "bring themselves to do it"; that is, they only go so far in subjugating their individual autonomy to the control of larger structures, and the larger the structure, the less they give to it. Hence, governments are generally weaker in the sense that they cannot count upon the allegiance of their citizenry to the same extent as other "more civilized" places, and must rule more by an iron fist than a velvet glove.
The self-imposed limitations of these groups, both economic and cultural, is what give them more power over governing institutions: the less one has to lose, the more freedom one has to disobey. While they may publically pine for more power and influence, the truth is that they will always be under the stated control of any large power that cares to administer them, the most recent of course being Russia. And even at that, administration is tough. They have all sustained huge loss of life to Russia, and have operated hugely successful giant black market systems in the face of massive control. They also each mounted rebellions/revolutions against the controlling powers--doomed to a certain kind of short-term failure, of course, but which will ultimately be vindicated in the tide of history, as the small tribal units in that area of the world will continue as they more-or-less always have since the Huns, like small bits of flotsam in the ebbing and flooding tides of the great movements in history.
It's a strange place. Like some other places in the world, you will never "get it", unless you are "in", and if you have no bloodline, you will never "be in". I'm talking about how you are treated, of course, which has a lot (everything) to do with your understanding of the nature of the tribe.