A few questions about 6th-7th century Europe.

I've got a few questions I've been wondering about for one of the TL ideas I have. Would anybody happen to know:

1) When the Germanic tribes in Bohemia, modern Eastern Germany, and Poland were supplanted and assimilated by the Slavic tribes moving west?

2) Who lived in present day Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria before the Slavic migrations? Did Slavs settle in present day Romania at all?

3) Were there any Iranic speaking peoples left on the Ponto-Caspain steppe at all by this time?
 
I am not knowledgeable on the first two.

On the Iranic issue, it is probable that their was some Iranic peoples in the Pontic steppe at this time and we know that Iranic peoples where the majority of Azerbaijan at this time. Groups like the Alan are still present in this region (as they are today) who have some relation to Iranic peoples like the Sarmatians. The numbers of Iranic speakers however is decreasing at this point and will by the Abbasid period likely close to extinction.
 
I'm pretty sure the reason the Slavs were able to move into there at that time was because those Germanic tribes had migrated west. Much of that region's described as being "basically empty" in that time.

Hungary and Romania seem to have been a mixture of peoples. Goths, Gepids, other East Germanics, Romance-speaking peoples, and remnants of peoples of Antiquity, like the Dacians or Thracians. Bulgaria probably also had a significant minority of Greeks. I think we can tell that Slavs settled throughout Romania thanks to the many Slavic loanwords in the Romanian language.
 
I've got a few questions I've been wondering about for one of the TL ideas I have. Would anybody happen to know:

1) When the Germanic tribes in Bohemia, modern Eastern Germany, and Poland were supplanted and assimilated by the Slavic tribes moving west?

2) Who lived in present day Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria before the Slavic migrations? Did Slavs settle in present day Romania at all?

3) Were there any Iranic speaking peoples left on the Ponto-Caspain steppe at all by this time?
1.) Slavicisation occurred throughout the two centuries you named. It´s difficult to pinpoint more exactly. Modern-day Eastern Germany was Slavicised later than Bohemia and Poland, like half a century later overall. Slavicisation is also a more gradual process during this time, not something you should mentally model as a whole part of the map changing colours. Slavic groups slowly expanded along river valleys and across lake systems, swinging left and right with their slash-and-burn agriculture, establishing only very light wooden defenses at first. The areas in question were, in all likelihood, thinly populated at that time, but that doesn`t mean there was absolutely nobody there. Throughout both centuries, other remnant groups may have coexisted and perhaps at the beginning not even have known of the new arrivals. As population grew, more territory was controlled, resistance was encountered (whether from competing Slavic new arrivals or from relic populations cannot be told), some Slavic groups prevailed and built more solid gorods and established more hierarchical societies. But that describes a situation that is more like the 8th century in most of these places, in some earlier, in some later.

2.) @metalinvader665 answered this. Slavic loanwords entered Romanian through Old Church Slavonic over the centuries, too, and maybe even more so than through early migrations, but I agree that there will have been Slavic settlements across Romania, too.

3.) @John7755 يوحنا answered this. I would add that, under Avar and Bulgar rule, there were likely lots of people speaking Iranian languages still.
 
1) When the Germanic tribes in Bohemia, modern Eastern Germany, and Poland were supplanted and assimilated by the Slavic tribes moving west?
Ethnic identity is really changing and proteiform without a political structure able to define a stable one. Generally, a tribe wasn't 100% "Germanic" or "Slavic" in most of the Barbaricum (these concepts being, ethnically, void) but rather a mix of whatever you could find, fitting in the shoes of tribal structures.
While the Vistula region clearly knew a demographical decline by the IInd/IIIrd (mostly due to epidemics and climatic changes, probably more than migrations), it remained as much clearly inhabited by the rough same populations : it was a smooth progress that probably looked like the "germanisation" of Germania in the IInd century BCE that ended up with a mix of Celtized and Germanized features.

It was probably helped by the appearance of the Avar Khaganate, whom peripherical peoples were structured along a slavicized elite coming from beyond the Vistula, and having a definitively less "German" overlook (but probably more sarmatian IMO). As the formative states around the Avar hegemony (in the same way you did end up having formative state arounds Roman or Carolingian hegemony) went trough an ethnogenesis dominated by slavic identity (rather than ethnicity in the strictest sense), you ended up with a clear slavification process that couldn't be recorded so far.

While it's hard to pinpoint a departure point that probably didn't have existed as such in first place, it was probably a thing in the VIth century already.

2) Who lived in present day Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria before the Slavic migrations?
Your usual mix of Romans and romanized Germans or Sarmatians south of Danube, in different proportions but in relatively few numbers (Illyricum suffered a lot from Late Antiquity epidemics, climatic change, raids and economical decline). North of Danube, more or less like in the Vth : more or less romanized Germans and Sarmatians, possibly some scattered remnants of the Hunnic confederacy.

Did Slavs settle in present day Romania at all?
Slavs basically settled everywhere in Balkans up to the Mediterranean Sea. In some places they get assimilated, in some places they did assimilated. It depends a lot of the regions, even outside Byzantium.

3) Were there any Iranic speaking peoples left on the Ponto-Caspain steppe at all by this time?
Alans were, altough they were probably part of various tribal confederacies, that they don't seem to have been leading : Avar, Bulgars, Khazars, etc. and their own direct presence was eventually limited to Caucasus piemont, in Alania.
 
My 'specialisation' would be Charlemagne's time, but I think the following may be helpful to you,

Re: 1

Bohemia didn't really exist until the High Middle Ages. It is known that a large "empire" (probably more of a tribal confederation than anything else) occupied Moravia and surrounding areas in the 630s, so they were likely there since Attila's empire fell in 455 or so (The collapse of the Huns triggering the 'Second Migration', the first being around 376). In Poland, a distinctively Polish state appeared at the turn of the 9th century, but it had likely been controlled by Slavs since the First Migration, especially as Attila never rode that far north.

Eastern Germany is a little more complicated. The Bavarians (distinctively German) held a duchy or kingdom there from about 500 AD onwards, centred around the city of Regensburg but extending roughly to the 13-degree-east longitude line. In the Northwest, the Saxons had control to just past the Elbe river. Near that (in 800) was the southern territories of the Danes. The rough square formed by these borders (and the west edge of Poland) was never really properly settled by a feudal state until about 1100, so there is very little record of what went on there. I would expect it to have been 75% or so German/Norse/whatever you want to call it, with Silesia being owned by Slavs (part of proto-Poland). Any Slavs would have come some time around the First Migration, to escape the Huns and whatever else came out from the Caspian.

Re: 2

Hungary etc. was populated by small groups, known by the Romans as stuff like Dacians or Pannonians. By the 300s, they were something like 1/2 Celt, 1/2 Roman. (Yes, the Celts did reach there once). Later Hungary was occupied by the Avars and Bulgaria was occupied by the Bulgars ("First Bulgarian Emprie" etc.)

About Romania, it was split between the Bulgarian empire and the Avars. And then the Magyars in the 9th century.

Re: 3

I'm assuming you mean the desert-type area near modern Astrakhan? In which case, no. It was populated by the Khazars from the 600s, who were a Mongol-type nomad group. I think they replaced some other Mongol-type nomad group.

- BNC
 
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