PREHISTORIC DACIA

by Nicolae Densusianu

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CONTENTS

NICOLAE DENSUSIANU, his life and work.

PREFACE by Dr. C. I. Istrati

(TN - When Nicolae Densusianu died in 1911, only 1120 pages from Prehistoric Dacia had been printed. The whole book had 1152 pages, without the introduction and final conclusion, which were only in unfinished note form and could not be used afterwards.

Dr.C.I.Istrati was asked by the executor of his testament to publish the rest of the pages, and to write a preface for the whole work. The preface is 114 pages long, so I will present it here in a much shortened form. The reader must not forget that the voice is Dr.Istrati’s and the time of writing was 1912).

Nicolae Densusianu (1846 – 1911) was born at Densus, a little Romanian village in Transylvania, (at that time part of the Austro – Hungarian empire), not far from Sarmisegetuza, later Ulpia Traiana, the former capital of Dacia (TN – today Romania).

His was an old Romanian family, Pop de Hateg, and his father Bizantius, was the priest of the village. He grew up therefore in a Romanian cultural environment, although stifled by persecution, lack of freedom of speech and suppression of their mother language, Romanian.

He took his law degree at the University of Sibiu in 1872, after which he practiced law at Fagaras, then Brasov. In 1877, at the beginning of the Russo -Turkish war (in which Romania played such a significant role in obtaining the victory and her freedom from the Turkish yoke), he resigned, migrated to Romania and received Romanian citizenship. At Bucharest he worked first at the Court of Appeal, and became a member of the nationalistic movement. He published in French “L’element Latin en orient. Les Roumains du Sud: Macedoine, Thessalie, Epire, Thrace, Albanie, avec une carte ethnographique” (TN – The Latin element in the east. The southern Romanians: Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, Thrace, Albania, with an ethnographic map).

In 1878 he received a commission from the Romanian Academy to research and collect historical documents in the libraries and archives of Hungary (Budapest) and Transylvania (Cluj, Alba-Iulia and Brasov). It took him 15 months to complete this task, during which he discovered hundreds of original documents, manuscripts, chronicles, treaties, manifests, old drawings, paintings and facsimiles. For his extraordinary contribution, he was elected in 1880 member correspondent of the Academy, in the historical section, and was offered the position of librarian – archivist. Nevertheless, he was very poorly paid and lived almost in poverty, until 1884 when he received the position of translator for the Army General Staff.

In 1884 he published “The revolution of Horia in Transylvania and Hungary, 1784-1785, written on the basis of 783 official documents”, banned in Hungary, work which was the last word in documenting the terrible tragedy of that section of our national population, the uprising which had preceded the French revolution.

In 1885 he published “Monuments for the history of the country of Fagaras” treating in detail the real ancient history of the Romanians of Transylvania, compared to their present situation, under Austro-Hungarian rule. He deplored the fact “that once falsehood is introduced in history, it is very difficult to uproot it and even to discover it”.

During this same year he started work on his great masterpiece Prehistoric Dacia, and, in order to gather material for it, he departed in 1887 on a scientific trip towards Italy. He passed through Croatia, where he studied in the library of the Academy of Agram all the collections of original manuscripts regarding the Vlachii, or Romanians from southern Croatia, then traveled through the villages of these Romanians, settled near the river Culpa, but already losing their nationality. From there he entered Istria, where he visited the local Romanian villages, from where he collected important material about language and traditions. He then traveled to Dalmatia, staying at Ragusa for some time, where he studied and copied documents from the old archives of the Ragusan republic. From Ragusa he traveled to Rome, where he spent seven months, studying in the library and archives of the Vatican, after which he traveled through the Neapolitan countryside, Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, in order to become conversant with the customs and the way of life of the peasant population of Italy.

He returned to his country, Romania, with a significant historical and ethnographic material.

Between 1887 and 1897 6 volumes of “Documents regarding the History of Romanians, 1199-1345, collected and accompanied by notes”, and in 1893 he wrote the study “The religious independence of the Romanian Metropolitan Church of Alba-Iulia”.

In 1894 he voluntarily withdrew from public work, refused a new, very good position, being content with minimal means of subsistence, in order to have the peace and quiet needed to finish his monumental work Prehistoric Dacia. In 1895 though, he took a commission from the War Ministry and wrote “The glorious princes and famous captains of the Romanian countries”.

After 1897 he decided to dedicate all his time to Prehistoric Dacia.

In his own words “I always had in my sight the history of the entire Romanian element, in whatever countries it found itself in ancient times, either constituted in bigger states, or organized in districts only, provinces and national counties, or, finally, scattered in smaller and more remote ethnic islands, because of other superimposed nations, but leading a Romanian way of life”.

Tired and sick, he retired in 1899 even from the continuing publication of the historical documents, but continues to publish short studies on different subjects, in parallel to his great work. So, in 1901 he published “Military Romania” and the study “The origin and historical importance of the Romanian cavalry”, and in 1902 he was named a member correspondent of the Romanian Geographical Society. In 1904 he published a study about the development of the Romanian language, affirming that “to accept phonetics as a basis for the correct writing and speech, means to distort a common Romanian language, the chronology, the formation and unity of which go back into the most remote of times”. In 1906 he wrote an unpublished study regarding “The military history of the Romanian people, from the most remote times until the 18^th century”, and in 1909 he published two very important studies: “The war of 1330 between King Carol Robert of Hungary and Basarab, the Domn (TN – the equivalent of king, or prince, ruler of the country) of The Romanian Country” and “The war of 1369-1370 between Ludovic I, the King of Hungary and Vladislav Basarab, the Domn of The Romanian Country”.

Finally, he devoted himself wholly to Prehistoric Dacia, which took him forty years in all to complete. Only to make it ready for print took him the last eleven years of his life, dedicated to assiduous work, but alas, he died before seeing it published.

Apart from his lengthy travel through Italy, Istria and Dalmatia, he made a number of similar trips, especially in 1899, to the mountain districts of the country, from Buzeu to Mehedinti, to see in person what he had heard about, and to establish the state and value of prehistoric remains of exceptional importance. He always used a scientific method, and, starting with 1893, he wrote, printed and sent far and wide, at his expense, his extremely important Questionnaire, about the historical traditions and antiquities of the countries inhabited by Romanians, about which he said “Each village, each mountain, each valley, each town, has its own historical legends and traditions…that go further than the epoch of Dacia’s colonization and even to the epoch of the first kings of Rome”. And he stressed the importance of these memories especially for Romanians, because “the epoch of our historical life up to 1290ad was without chroniclers. An immense number of events which happened on the territory of Trajan’s Dacia, from the first contact of the Romans with the Dacians, to the year 1290ad, were left unrecorded. We lack the chronicles, we lack the documents. The monuments erected, have been destroyed and have vanished, even the peoples who destroyed them have vanished…”

To this questionnaire he received answers from all the lands inhabited by Romanians, sent mainly by the local school teachers, who were in direct contact with the communities.

In Prehistoric Dacia, Densusianu unveils a past almost entirely unknown, a glorious past for Dacia, for the people who lived in these places who, Densusianu proves, are our direct ancestors.

He knew profoundly the classics, and mastered their language, and read them in original, so that he gives the right interpretation of texts formerly appeared with the wrong meaning, owing to the lack of knowledge of the translator.

It is incredible and defies the imagination how he finds, to the last detail, in Romanian legends and ballads, the ancient deeds described in the ancient texts, starting with Homer himself.

His argumentation is solid, well-grounded, extremely well informed. He was accused of advancing hypotheses, but he proved. He proved the millenary continuity of the Romanian people and the conservative force of our nation.

The general essence of his theory is in short the following:

Densusianu starts from the prehistoric man and gradually reconstitutes the biggest empire known to the ancient world, the Pelasgian empire. He shows the extraordinary role played for the human civilization by this empire, owing especially to the deified kings Uranos and Saturn, and their wives Gaea and Rhea.

He proves – it can’t be said otherwise – that the entire, but absolutely the entire mythology, so-called Greek, was born in the mountains of Dacia, between Buzau and the Iron Gates. The great temple of the world was on the peak Omul, in the Bucegi mountains.

He proves that a principal branch of these Pelasgians spoke a language called by him proto-Latin, which gave birth to Latin and the neo-Latin languages. He shows how tribes of this empire (the basis of which he believes to have been mostly religious), composed mainly of shepherds, and later by metal-workers, descended and founded Troy, Mycenae and Rome.

He tries to recreate the customs, belief and language of these peoples and manages to explain countless historical facts, which so far had been unclear.

If we, Romanians, have resisted the floods of invasions, if we exist, from far beyond the Nister in the east (Dnestr), to Istria, Switzerland and Little Valahia of Bohemia in the west, from south Poland in the north, to Athens and the islands of the Archipelagos in the south, it is not only because the Roman colonists were brought here by Trajan. Our essence is proto-Latin, we were the ancient Arimii (as they were called in remote times), one of the principal tribes of the Pelasgians. One of their branches were Rimii who founded Rome, Aromanii of today already existed, and it was from here that they penetrated far to the end of Asia, the north of Africa, to Spain and Denmark, as in all of these regions it can be observed that their ancient populations were branches of the same people, who dwelt and had their centre especially in Transylvania and Oltenia.

(TN – Dr.C.I.Istrati continues with a long presentation of the work, with quotations and extra supporting material by other authors, the short form of which follows):

Densusianu begins his work with The Quaternary Epoch – the Paleolithic period. His first chapter is about The first inhabitants of Dacia. He continues with a description of the stone fashioned tools and of the animals which lived then and there: Felis spelae (the cave lion), Bos urus or Bos primigenius (shown on the Moldavian coins and coat of arms), the wooly bison and Cervus Megacerus, all of which are still mentioned in Romanian folk poetry. He speaks about the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man and about the Neolithic invasion of Europe, affirming that “Here at the Lower Danube and especially in the countries of Dacia, the fact is certain, had formed and coagulated the great and powerful centre of the Neolithic population in Europe”.

He then treats extensively and competently the prehistoric ceramic of Dacia and its ornamentation, precursor of that of Troy, Mycenae, central Europe and the Aegean cultural world.

In the following chapter Densusianu treats The prehistoric monuments of Dacia, especially The heroic Pelasgian tumuli and The tumulus or tomb of Achilles in Leuce Island, which is none other than the Serpents’ Island, in the Black Sea. He describes in detail the Temple of Apollo on this same island (also called the island of the Hyperboreans), speaks about its later role, establishes which was the country of Apollo and Latona (Leto) and describes the people of the Hyperboreans, generally shepherds, who were the Pelasgians of this region. He proves that after Apollo’s cult had moves southwards, this island and temple were consecrated to Achilles’ shadow. Finally he presents the Romanian legend about the divine origin of the “Sacred White Monastery”, representing this same temple of Apollo.

The author treats then The commemorative mounds of Osiris, about Osiris’ expedition to the Ister and his wars with Typhon in today Oltenia, and writes about The giant furrow of Novac (Ostrea).

(TN – at this point in the preface Dr.Istrati mentions a study of his, about “a number of statuettes representing Egyptian divinities, found in Romania” and includes ten photos of them).

The next chapter studies The megalithic monuments of Dacia, and makes comparisons with the ones from western Europe, after which Densusianu treats at length the Termini liberi Patris (the great sacred road of the Hyperboreans), of which a considerable part still exists in Basarabia.

He also presents The megalithic simulacra of the Pelasgian divinities (on the peaks of the Carpathians), and The principal prehistoric divinities of Dacia.

These were: Uranos (Caelus, Kerus, Cerus manus/Caraiman) and Gaea (Earth, Tellus, Terra, Mater, Caia); Saturn (Dokius Caeli filius, Omolos) and Rhea (Cybele, Terra Dacia, Dochia, Dochiana), who represented in a newer form the same divinity of the earth, Gaea.

(TN – Here again, Dr.Istrati adds the description and three photos of a statuette of Cybele found at Romula, Romanati district, in which Cybele is represented sitting on a throne flanked by a lion on each side.

He continues with more photos and descriptions of statuettes of Rhea found in Romania, Greece, Italy and France. He finishes this topic with an important study, including photos, regarding the traditional head dress of the Romanian peasant women, resembling that of a statue of Rhea found in Romania, and continues the presentation of Densusianu’s work)

On the same theme of Cybele, Densusianu proves as absolute historical truth, that Sibylla Erythrea or Dacica was born in the mountains of Transylvania. He then presents Saturn’s simulacrum as Omolos, on the peak Omul in Bucegi mountains, which he says “was in the prehistoric antiquity the sacred mountain of the pastoral Pelasgian tribes”. He proves that the religious beliefs which later constituted the core of Greek mythology, spread to the ancient world and especially to Greece from here.

The next chapter describes The cyclopic altars on Caraiman mountain and The Sky Column on the Omul Peak. He shows that mount Atlas, which in old legends supported the northern pole of the sky, was not in Libya or NW Africa, but in the country of the Hyperboreans. This mountain is the Caucasus of Prometheus’ fame. He proves that the Mycenaean civilization was Pelasgian and also proves that the famous Lion’s Gate represents the Sky Column of Bucegi Mountains, which, he asserts, represents even the symbol of eternal life for Egyptians, Etruscans, Carthage and Sicily. From Prometheus he goes on to talk in depth about the cult of Mithras, showing the connection between the two.

Another important chapter is about The Columns of Hercules, and he proves again, beyond any doubt, that they were near the Iron Gates on the Danube, after which follows a chapter about the origin of metalworking, north of the Lower Danube, on the territory of Dacia. He also explains the origin of the Copper tablets of the Hyperboreans, the Tall copper column from the mountains of Olt, the Giant copper crater on top of the Sky Column and the Great Gold Column. While still on these topics, he also discusses Arabia felix of Evhemer, Panchea island from the Danube delta, and the famous Gold apples of Gaea. This chapter is followed by The golden fleece and the legend of the Argonauts and he proves again, beyond any doubt, that the capital of Aietes was on the place of today Galati, in the district of Buzau (Buxios), near the mountainous region called Colti (Colchi). And he explains the origin of the Istriens, the Romanian inhabitants of the Istria peninsula and the nearby islands (in northern Adriatic Sea), who were the Colchii sent by king Aietes to catch the Argonauts, but, who, unable to do this, had settled in that region. Densusianu then makes a comparative study of the dialects of the Istriens and Romanians, using as text the Bible’s Parable of the lost son. Next, he talks about Vulcan and presents at length The Hyperborean Treasure of Pietroasa, to which he adds his own interpretation of the signs (considered so far to be runes) carved on the big gold torque of the treasure, proving that the signs were not runes and that the treasure did not belong to the Goths, as it had been assumed by others, but Hyperborean. On this occasion he also writes about the Phoenix bird, which he ascertains is the real symbolical bird shown on the old emblems of the Romanian Country. Halfway through his work, Densusianu brings together, in a special, massive chapter The Pelasgians or Proto-Latins (Arimii), their beginnings and prehistoric civilization, the principal branches of this people and their migrations, the southern, eastern, western and northern Pelasgians. He then treats separately the Latins, Turseni, Etruscans, Agathyrses and Blaci (Vlachi), and the ancient laws of Dacia (antique Valachorum lex), after which follows the last vast chapter of the book, The great Pelasgian Empire, in which he gives the geographical description of the country of the first Pelasgian kings (gods), describes their rule and wars, includes the traditional related Romanian folk poems and ballads about Saturn, Hermes, Vulcan and Neptune, continues with The decline of the Pelasgian empire, and ends with a large part consecrated to The Pelasgian language, starting from Herodotus’ time and ending with the Carmina Saliara (The Saliare Songs), the barbarian spells, the Carmen Fratrum Arvalium (the Song of the Arvali brothers) and the Pelasgian inscription from the island of Lemnos, which he is the first to decipher.

(TN : The author of the preface finishes with praises for the extraordinary scientific and national value of Prehistoric Dacia and hopes that this great work will be translated in other European languages, so that this new vast treasure of information and material, including the Romanian folk legends, poems, customs, etc, related to it, will revolutionize the established way of thinking about the birth and development of civilizations in Europe and around the Mediterranean).