The word ethnogenèse refers to the birth of a Peuple.

The birth of new people equipped with a clean Culture, possibly also a Language, a Mythology and a clean Conscience can rise from the insulation of a human group over one long period. Important influences coinciding (geography, climate, flora, fauna, other cultures), a community of destiny and/or history of a certain group of men are another possibility of explanation of the birth of people.

There exists at the time of the ethnogenèse of people of other outstanding social aspects, like the ethnic characteristics, linguistic and cultural, or specificities of the new people.

New people can also be born from the fusion of several people.

The Roman ethnography and the confrontation of Mediterranean space with the barbarians

The field of the ethnogenèse developed in the Eighties in Europe and America in connection with the migration of the people and the transformation of the Roman world at the end of the Antiquité and the beginning of the Moyen-âge.

The migration of the people must first of all be considered from the Roman point of view, the concept of ethnicity, objectifies, being unknown in Antiquity. However the Roman people ( populus Romanus ) had a certain experiment resulting from his meeting with many people ( gentes ).

Patrick Geary defines using the terminology of the ancient sources two models of people: people by Heredity (like the Goths and the Vandals) and people by constitution (like the Roman citizens). This poses a duality between people (aspect biological) and populus (legal aspect).

The north of Europe was called by Jordanes (Byzantine Life century) the vagina gentium or stamps people. The Barbarians, very vigorous and resisting cold, there would have been very fertile and would have multiplied in an incredible way. However the Roman scholars denied the capacity of these people to develop cultures, cities and civilizations, indicator this world like a permanent chaos and without remarkable past, regarding them even as innumerable masses of savages. Synesius de Cyrène reported to its emperor Arcadius that no new people had been met in the north of the Black Sea; one was at the time satisfied to suitably re-elect the people to mislead the Romans and to drive back their fears.

Indeed the ancient ethnonymy did not designate people strictly speaking but more of the populated areas: César did not recognize at the Francs and the Alémans of the Germanic lifestyles but named them Celtes as a resident in the East of the the Rhine; in the same way the Vandals, Goths and Huns were gathered under the name of Scythes.

One millenium of ethnography will have brought methods and knowledge of which one could be used oneself for the end of Antiquity to classify the events socio-histories. The scholars like Ammanius Marcellinus (fine of IVè century), Zosimos (beginning of the Life century) or the civils servant Byzantine well-read men like Priscos (medium of Vè century) and Procope (medium of the Life century) adapted this knowledge and retranscribed the most important sources, one thus has today, allowing to include/understand the ethnic process of the time.

What people?

What is this whereas people with the direction where heard the authors of the end of the Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages? A scientist of the XIXè century gave a a little fast answer: people would be a group of men sharing an ascent, a language and a culture, which one recognizes with clothing and the armament and more deeply bound by the right and the tradition.

With an almost similar vision, Isidore of Seville (VIIè century) reduced on the other hand the people from wire of Noah, thus following a biblical model . One made use thus of this interpretation to justify the appearance of a Polish kingdom and the formation of a Swedish State in XIVè century. The humanistic French, German and Italian also carried out similar argumentations to explain dimensions of the territories and the respectability of their respective kingdoms.

The people are not natural

The theory of the ethnogenèse

The people are formed only from other old and never appear only.

Various examples

Araméens

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