Dear Mr. Skerbinc,

As I've received two e-mails with the same subject recently, I will anwer to both of them, adressing my answers to both senders.

----- Original Message -----
From: Anton Skerbinc
To: grzegorj@interia.pl
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 4:51 AM
Subject: Veneti

Dear Mr. Jagodzinski,

I read at Gary Gorsha's website your Guest Book posting on the subject of Veneti, and I decided to briefly respond. Your manner of writing surprises me, you perhaps don't realize it, but you write like as if you were a 19th century German historian.

I cannot see anything surprising. Maybe you are convinced to the "theory" of Bor and Co. but I am standing on the ground of science and not fantasy and that is why it is impossible for me to accept Bor's opinions. Please read details in the other e-mail why I do think so.

You are attacking Slovenes, a Slavic people, as if they did not have the right to Veneti research.

Please read my comments again. I am not attacking any nation, and I wish all the best to all Slavic brothers, including the Slovenes. I am attacking the views of the authors of the book which is not based on facts but on fiction. You can read examples from my other mail.
Bor and co. have tumped up that Polish researchers stated that the Adriatic Venets were Slavs.
They have trumped up that there are West Slavic features in the Slovene language.
They have trumped up that only Slovene, Lusatian and Sanscrit have preserved dual number.
They have even trumped up that Venetic texts were not deciphered before they "deciphered" them.
They have trumped up that the texts cannot be understand with the help of Latin and other non-Slavic languages.
And finally, they have trumped up that the texts can be deciphered with Slovene (double error: generally ancient texts cannot be deciphered with modern languages / dialects).
If you are of another opinion, please decipher the Venetic text I quoted (in the other e-mail) with Slovene!!! Or any other of Venetic inscriptions published on the Internet.

You forget that there is a historical connection between Slovenes and the West Slavic Veneti.

There is not such a connection at all. To the contrary, there is a gap of 600 years between the youngest Venets (100 BC) and the more ancient Slavs (500 AD).

Slovenes have always been called by Germans either Vinedi or Windische. The names Veneti, Venedi, Vinidi, Wenden, Wendische, Windische, Vendek mean the same people, they apply to the same West Slavic people at different times and in different geographic locations.

And the Slavs themselves also knew a nation called Veneti who were not Slavs! They took their name as the name of Vętiči (Old Russian Vjatiči), one of their tribes which was obviously made of people of another non-Slavic origin who were Slavized. The Slavs took that name as a common adjective vętj- 'larger, bigger'. In the same way they took the name of another non-Slavic nation, the Avars (cf. Czech obři 'giants', the same Polish olbrzymi (Old polish obrzymi), Old Russian obre), several hundreds of years later.

Notice also that the Slavs did NOT call themselves Venets! It is the name what was dubbed for them by the Germans. The Germans called their Eastern neighbours "Veneti" (in their native forms Wendische, Windische etc.) without difference what nation they were from. In the same way Poles called their North-Eastern neighbours "Prusy" and the name meant originally one of Baltic peoples, but next – the Germans. History knows many similar instances (Turkish Bulgars and Slavic Bulgarians, ancient Venets and modern Venetians = inhabitants of Venetia province in Italy, Franks and French, Americans = Indians and Americans = English-spoken colonists from the Old World, Indians = inhabitants of India and Indians = inhabitants of America (Polish differentiates both names: Hindusi - Indianie, but English does not), ancient Egyptians and modern Egyptians (Arabs), ancients Assyrians and modern Assyrians (speaking Aramaic, not Assyrian) , the Jewish language = Hebrew from the Semitic family, and the Jewish language = Jiddisch from the Germanic group, and even ancient Volci (a Celtic tribe which once lived in Southern France) and modern Welsh (whose English name comes from Volci through an Old Germanic *wolhi) (in Polish also Włosi = Italians, and Wołosi = Romanians), who have nothing to do with Volci or generally with the Celts.
So, even if "Slovenes have always been called by Germans either Vinedi or Windische", exactly nothing appears from this fact.

As you know, the dominant power for many centuries in central Europe has been Germany, and all areas of research were effectively monopolized by it, with the result that every department of study, be it history or archaeology or linguistics was subverted to serve Germany's expansionist and anti-Slavic ideas.

Please do not mix newer history and older times. And do not mix politics and science! Yes, I know, it would be very fine for the Slovenes if the views of Bor and co. appear to be true. That is why you must be very attentve when analyzing such views (I do not write "theory" because it is not a theory!). But science based on somebody's wishes is not science but fantasy.
Slavs were sub-human and they had no history, and they contributed nothing to European civilization, Germany was the only nation that contributed.
As a Pole I know it excellently. My nation suffered enough from the Germans during the history, beginning from the 10th century until the 2nd World War. But yet it is not a reason for supporting lies!

However, things are changing, and Slovenes now have the freedom to do their own research, which does not mean Germans will accept the findings of a small Slavic nation, just as they did not accept the findings of Polish scientists in the last century,

It was not the Germans who rejected the theory that the Polish nation is the oldest among the Slavs and that all the Slavs come from Poland. It was Poles themselves. Older ideas were rejected some years ago not because of their political incorrectness but because of newer discoveries (e.g. those from Ukraine which suggest that there were the Slavic homeland).
however, there are some world-class researchers who are in agreement with the so-called Veneti theory as presented by Slovenes Savli, Bor, and Tomazic, in the book Veneti: First Builders of European Community.
Šavli, Bor and Tomažič are world-class researchers??? Who has heard about them? They are completely unknown - together with their fantasies not basing on facts - except in Slovenia, maybe.

The Italian historical linguist Mario Alinei from the University of Utrecht, Holland, who attended the international conference on Ancient Peoples of Europe in Slovenia, 2003, stated that Slavs were in central Europe since Stone Age, they did not come from Pripet Swamps in the 6th century A.D., as German historians would have us believe.

It may be another lie of Bor and co. which you are believing. Godłowski was not a German but a Polish archeologist, as you can see from his name. It was he who formed that conception of "Pripet Swamps", not German scientists.

He stated that Slovenes were in the Po River Valley since Stone Age.

And I have heard that he made it basing himself on anthropological data, not on the language. Anthropological or genetical facts have nothing to do with languages!

That is of course why we even now find Slovenian place-names and toponyms all over northern Italy, and the Alps.

Please count them if you can, together with their etymology. I do not know such names.

Lord Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University, read the book, and recomended it to others.

Renfrew wrote a book "Archeology and the language" (I am translating its Polish title back, so I may not be exact). This is NOT a scientific book. It is full of errors, also of logical errors. None of serious researchers treats Renfrew's views seriously. His theory that Indo-European people came into Europe as early as at the beginning of the 6th millennium is unbelievable at all.
I wrote an abundant critique article on this book (in Polish, http://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/lingwpl/renfrew.html). Another Polish author, a famous archeologist Maciej Popko wrote me an e-mail with congratulations: he can also see that that renfrew's book is not a serious work. And he wrote a similar article. None of us knew about the article of the other. But our deductions were very similar.
Renfrew is known from his theory of spreading people... but all the rest is even not in scientific style. He cannot imagine mechanisms of spreading people other than he proposed - it is not too scientific in fact. And because he cannot imagine such mechanisms, he thinks that people did not migrate at all... Nonsense not worth even time to read. If you can speak Polish, you are welcome on my page to learn how erroraneous Renfrew is. Maybe one day I will translate this article into English.

If you are interested in the above book, where you can find a great deal of information on the subject of Veneti from the Baltic to the Adriatic and beyond, I would be glad to send you a complimentary copy. All you need to do is send me your postal address. It is an attractive book, hard covers, 150 illustrations, index, 533 pages.

United Europe has brought hunger, unemployment and homelessness to Poland. Ca. 4 millions of Polish people have not a job. Ca. 200 people die of the cold each winter. Also me personally, I am living in more and more poverty. So, if you can afford to make me a present of this book, I will really appreciate it. I cannot promise that I will change my opinion, but I will read the book carefully for sure if only I have it in my hands. All I can do now is to search it in public libraries. But there nobody has heard of this book.

If you want my address, here you are:
Grzegorz Jagodziński [n acute]
ul. 9 Maja 3/87
32-590 Libiąż [a ogonek - z dot]
Poland

With many cordial regards,
GJ

Page Created: February 1, 2004
Last Updated: February 16, 2004
©Copyright 2004 Gary L. Gorsha