Why did people doubt this? It doesn’t sound so ridiculous that a Germanic-speaking people would come from Scandinavia, which has a island called Gothland, a province East Gothland and West Gothland, a city called Gothenburg and people called Geats (probably related to Goths).
> The findings challenge decades of scholarship that played down the importance of migration and emphasized the spread of language and culture between settled populations.“
> “What the genotyping is showing is what the ancient sources report, and what late–20th century historiography has been working very hard to deny,” says Yale University historian Noel Lenski, who was not involved in the work. “We have to … admit the sources knew more than we thought they did.”
If I'm reading that right they are implying academics were pushing the idea of cultural exchange being the most valuable thing, a vague menagerie of local and foreign cultures coming together, rather than a specific set of people arriving from a far off land to dominant an existing empire and influencing the entire region in the process.
I'm not so sure this study proves anything new, too. We always knew some Goths came from Scandinavia, that they mixed extensively with less mobile people in the regions they passed through during the age of migration, and that Gothic identity was (at least eventually) more tied to Arianism than to ancestry, so that when they became Catholic they stopped identifying as Gothic.
The real wild Gothic origin story is that the island of Gotland got overpopulated and they decided by lottery which 1/3 of them should leave.
Why did people doubt this? It doesn’t sound so ridiculous that a Germanic-speaking people would come from Scandinavia, which has a island called Gothland, a province East Gothland and West Gothland, a city called Gothenburg and people called Geats (probably related to Goths).
The article explains
> The findings challenge decades of scholarship that played down the importance of migration and emphasized the spread of language and culture between settled populations.“
> “What the genotyping is showing is what the ancient sources report, and what late–20th century historiography has been working very hard to deny,” says Yale University historian Noel Lenski, who was not involved in the work. “We have to … admit the sources knew more than we thought they did.”
If I'm reading that right they are implying academics were pushing the idea of cultural exchange being the most valuable thing, a vague menagerie of local and foreign cultures coming together, rather than a specific set of people arriving from a far off land to dominant an existing empire and influencing the entire region in the process.
The cultural exchange part was more a post punk thing. The Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Of all the mythic origin stories about the globe, Goths originating in Scandinavia is one of the less exciting ones to be proven correct.
DNA from unearthed car sized scales proving a giant snake carved the rivers and shape of the land would be something ...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagyl
I'm not so sure this study proves anything new, too. We always knew some Goths came from Scandinavia, that they mixed extensively with less mobile people in the regions they passed through during the age of migration, and that Gothic identity was (at least eventually) more tied to Arianism than to ancestry, so that when they became Catholic they stopped identifying as Gothic.
The real wild Gothic origin story is that the island of Gotland got overpopulated and they decided by lottery which 1/3 of them should leave.