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- Concerning the origin of the Goths before the 3rd century, there is no consensus among scholars. It was in the 3rd century that the Goths began to be described by Roman writers as an increasingly important people north of the lower Danube and Black Sea, displacing previous hegemonic groups of the region, such as the Carpi. However, while some scholars, such as Michael Kulikowski, believe there is insufficient evidence to come to strong conclusions, the most commonly accepted proposal is that the Goths known to the Romans were a people whose traditions derived to some extent from the Gutones who lived near the delta of the Vistula. More speculatively, the Gutones may have been culturally related to the similarly named Gutes of Gotland and the Geats of southern Scandinavia. The Goths of late antiquity were considered closely related to the Vandals and Gepids who lived to their northwest, like many Goths they were present near the Carpathian mountains, and classical authors said they used the same Germanic language. Classical writers also categorized the Goths as Scythians and Getae, linking them to their predecessors in the regions they lived in. The 3rd century Goths were a dominant group within an ethnically diverse region, and modern archaeologists consider the Goths indistinguishable in their material culture from their neighbours north of the lower Danube and Black Sea. Among the different types of evidence which are considered most relevant to tracing Gothic origins are their name, their written language, archaeological evidence of links between regions and classical Greco-Roman ethnographic literature, especially the Germania of Tacitus. In modern times, the most influential Roman account of Gothic origins has been the Getica of Jordanes, which continues to exert a strong influence. Since the Second World War, most scholars, accepting parts of the "ethnogenesis" model associated with the Vienna school, have tended to emphasize that the name, language and traditions of Goths of the 3rd century need not imply any a single largescale migration or any such "biological" cause of ethnicity. Some historians, such as Peter Heather, while partly accepting this argument, have nevertheless argued that there must have been a significant stream of movement from Poland towards the Ukraine over a long period of time. (en)
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| rdfs:comment
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- Concerning the origin of the Goths before the 3rd century, there is no consensus among scholars. It was in the 3rd century that the Goths began to be described by Roman writers as an increasingly important people north of the lower Danube and Black Sea, displacing previous hegemonic groups of the region, such as the Carpi. However, while some scholars, such as Michael Kulikowski, believe there is insufficient evidence to come to strong conclusions, the most commonly accepted proposal is that the Goths known to the Romans were a people whose traditions derived to some extent from the Gutones who lived near the delta of the Vistula. More speculatively, the Gutones may have been culturally related to the similarly named Gutes of Gotland and the Geats of southern Scandinavia. (en)
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