Question about the Huns

[Monty Python Ni]

I know everyone says that they didn't settle down and all that, but after all that pillaging and destruction, they did end up settling down. In fact, I just recently read somewhere that Finland was founded by the Huns. I don't know if this is really true, but wouldn't that give them greater cause to be in the game?

Heheheheh... the Finnish Empire would be kind of funny

 

[anandus]

I know everyone says that they didn't settle down and all that, but after all that pillaging and destruction, they did end up settling down. In fact, I just recently read somewhere that Finland was founded by the Huns. I don't know if this is really true, but wouldn't that give them greater cause to be in the game?

Heheheheh... the Finnish Empire would be kind of funny

Technically the Magyars.

But you're right, the Fins and people from Hun-gary are relatively close related.

 

[Monty Python Ni]

Technically the Magyars.

But you're right, the Fins and people from Hun-gary are relatively close related.

Wow... I can't believe I never thought of Hungary like that before... D'oh

 

[Hitti-Litti]

Huns didn't found Finland, some did just settle there. Finland was found in some way when Sweden conquered Finland and made the duchy of Finland.

 

[anandus]

Huns didn't found Finland, some did just settle there. Finland was found in some way when Sweden conquered Finland and made the duchy of Finland.

The *nation* Finland maybe not, but the Finnish people or to be more correct, the Finnish language is quite closely related to the Hungarian language.

Apparently this linguistic group goes as far back as the third millenium BC.
Also the Finno-Ugric language group is distinct from the Indo-European language group.

 

[Dnomal]

The Huns were like the Mongols of their day.

I don't think they built cities proper, but the Mongols only really built their capital. Having the Huns in would be cool, but then I'd have to make my whole "only urban cultures should be counted as civilisations, because civilisation derives from the word city-dweller".

I think It's be cool if someone modded in the Huns as a camp based barbarian force, so likt you get a random event:

News from distant lands, the Huns, and their leader "the scourge of God", has began pillaging and destroying everything in their path. Can anyone stop them?

Then other tribes of barbarians hit your borders trying to escape the Huns, kind of like what happened to the WRE.

 

[frob2900]

In fact, I just recently read somewhere that Finland was founded by the Huns. I don't know if this is really true

Nooo... It can't be true. Not at all. If it is then the Finnish public education system has failed me badly

 

[Breunor]

Monty,

Anandus is right. To clarify, the Huns and the people we call the Hungarians are different. The Hungarians and Finns are part of a linguisitic group called Ugro-Finnish, although there is a lot of academic dispute over what exactly belongs to this family. The Huns were Altaic and a different group. They were not in Finland.

Its hard to say exactly what happened to the Huns; their disappearance from recorded history is pretty remarkable having been a dominant politial power for roughly 100 years.

One possible explanation is to extend Professor Wolfram's analysis of the Germans to the nomads of Central Asia. Wolfram showed (convincingly) that the specific German tribes were less a 'people', but a leadership structure which incorporated the German people into their structure. So, 'Germans' would enter and adopt the social structure of the group, which is dominated by its leadership. Therefore, when a Germans 'tribe' had powerful leaders, other Gemans would join the banner.

Perhaps a similar structure applies to the nomads. Remember, the Hunnic army that hit the Western World in the 5th century probably rarely had more than 15,000 Huns and perhaps much less; the rest of the army was made of vassal states. When Atilla died, the vassal groups (possibly lead by the Gepids, a staunch ally of Atilla) overwhelmed them.

So, it is likely that the Huns that remained were absorbed in other nomadic groups like the Alans. But the real answer is that nobody knows and their disappearance, to me, is large part of their mystique.


Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[dh_epic]

The huns were probably very multi-ethnic. Kind of like Genghis Khan, they were united under one strong warlord. But this makes for a very loose and weak culture. When the Mongols settled China, they were quickly assimilated as Chinese. It's one of the greatest stories of the pen being mightier than the sword. Think of it as one major culture flip.

I suspect the same thing happened to the Huns. The Huns scared many of the germanic peoples, causing them to flee into the Roman Empire. Nobody is really sure, and the next part is really my own theory. But I figure the loose coalition of tribes under Attila eventually fell apart -- they were a big people with no official home. There are probably pockets of descendants of Atilla all across Eastern Europe, but they quickly took on the culture of the regions they invaded.

As for the Huns and Hungary, here's something from wikipedia:

The names "Hun" and "Hungarian" sound alike, but differ in etymology. The name "Hungarian" is derived from a Turkish phrase "onogur" which means "ten tribes", which possibly refers to a tribal covenant between the different Hungarian tribes that moved into the area of today's Hungary at the end of the 9th century.

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

The steppe cultures were extremely weak culturally, ethnically, and religiously, time and time again, history shows that steppe empire fall because they absorb into the superior cultures and totally assimilate. For example, the mongol ruler in china became chinese styled emperors and the mongol rulers in persia became muslim sultans.

 

[InFlux5]

Bulgarians and Rumanians, and to a lesser extent Hungarians, probably have a lot of Huns in their ancestry.

But like someone else said, these cultures have never contributed much to world history or culture. The Huns were basically absorbed into the greek/slavic/west Asian melting pot that the area around the Black Sea has always been.

 

[cybrxkhan]

there were little phases in the Hun's history. they began near China. then the Chinese kicked them out. migrating to the west, they split into two groups, the Epthalite (or White, i think) Huns, and the Huns that most people know thoday. the Ephtalite Huns terrorized India around the year 500, i think, but they were defeated eventulaly by a confederation of Indian princes. the other Huns came to Europe, pissed off the Roman Empire (but in fact actually helped it survive a few more years by distracting the Germans), settled down, got really weak, and then the Byzantines paid the Avars (i think) to beat the crap out of their renmants.

and the Huns were put in the Disney version of Mulan... which is, of course, fictional.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

slightly OT, but i read somewhere that the word ogre is derived from the word magyar...

 

[anandus]

slightly OT, but i read somewhere that the word ogre is derived from the word magyar...

Wikipedia:

Ogre comes from the French and was originally thought to have been coined by either Charles Perrault (1628-1703) or Marie-Catherine Jumelle de Berneville, Comtesse d' Aulnoy (1650-1705), both of whom were French authors. Other sources say that the name is from the word Hongrois, which means Hungarian.[1] Now it is thought that the word was actually inspired by the works of Italian author Giambattista Basile (1575-1632), who used the Neapolitan word uerco, in standard Italian orco. This word is documented [1] in earlier Italian works (Fazio degli Uberti, XIV cent.; Luigi Pulci, XV; Ludovico Ariosto, XV-XVI) and has even older cognates with the Latin orcus and the Old English orcnēas found in Beowulf lines 112-113, which inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's Orc. [2] All these words may derive from a shared Indo-European mythological concept (as Tolkien himself speculated, as cited by Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth, 45).

The first appearance of the word ogre in Perrault's work occurred in his Histoires ou Contes du temps Passé (1697).

 

[thomas.berubeg]

never mind, then... though i'll try to find where i read that...

 

[Gaius Octavius]

there were little phases in the Hun's history. they began near China. then the Chinese kicked them out.

Quite right. Some scholars believe the Chinese name "Hsiung-nu" and the Western "Hun" actually refer to the same group of people. The Hsiung-nu were active around China during the first centuries B.C. and A.D., I believe, whereas the Huns made their first appearance in Europe during the mid 300's A.D. So the idea is that the Hsiung-nu migrated west.

Interestingly, both the Hsiung-nu and Huns are in the game as barbarian tribes. If they are the same, I guess that's like having the both Angles and the English in the game, or the Celts and the Gauls, or the Germans and the HRE. (Doh! Gaius' law fulfilled again...)

 

[cybrxkhan]

I know the "Hsiung-nu" as the Xiongnu though. for me, it looks easier.

anyhow, on the Xiongnu, they were sort of the "first" nomad irritators in Eastern Asia. annoyed China for a long long long time, and then... they declined, the Chinese owned them, and whoodidoda, Chinese records don't record about them anymore!

 

[dh_epic]

The steppe cultures were extremely weak culturally, ethnically, and religiously, time and time again, history shows that steppe empire fall because they absorb into the superior cultures and totally assimilate. For example, the mongol ruler in china became chinese styled emperors and the mongol rulers in persia became muslim sultans.

I think the dissolution of the Huns speaks to a more interesting issue: that the pen is mightier than the sword. Such a powerful empire -- one that could defeat Rome -- would surely dominate the world?

But real life is not Civilization. So why is the pen mightier than the sword? I don't know, a few theories:

- Thoughts outlive men. You can kill a man, but it's harder to kill an idea. And ideas spread more easily than genes. The Huns and Mongols were powerful men, but were assimilated by those with more powerful ideas of identity, morality, language, and politics.

- Knowledge and human rights are linked. Not that knowledge always leads to humanity -- nuclear weapons say otherwise. But countries with more rights tend to innovate more thought. And where history has gone so far, technological advancement is a huge advantage. Hence why some limited notion of "human rights" exists in even the most backwards country. The ones that lacked such any notion of rights at all probably fell apart because of lack of innovation.

- More people suffer from this destruction than gain from it. Yes, a few powerful rulers and warlords gain from conquering the world. But the number of people trampled is too high. They rebel.

- Or maybe we were just lucky, and powerful inventions of morality spread. In an alternate reality, the world is quite rich and advanced, but under the rule of someone like the Huns. I argue this is unfathomable though. I don't think I'm being overly optimistic.

 

[Breunor]

there were little phases in the Hun's history. they began near China. then the Chinese kicked them out. migrating to the west, they split into two groups, the Epthalite (or White, i think) Huns, and the Huns that most people know thoday. the Ephtalite Huns terrorized India around the year 500, i think, but they were defeated eventulaly by a confederation of Indian princes. the other Huns came to Europe, pissed off the Roman Empire (but in fact actually helped it survive a few more years by distracting the Germans), settled down, got really weak, and then the Byzantines paid the Avars (i think) to beat the crap out of their renmants.

and the Huns were put in the Disney version of Mulan... which is, of course, fictional.

Breunor --- My understanding is that it isn't clear at all if the 'White Huns' are related (or probably we should say strongly related) to the Huns that came into Western Europe. There is a good chance it is just another 'naming thing'.

DH_Epic wrote: I think the dissolution of the Huns speaks to a more interesting issue: that the pen is mightier than the sword. Such a powerful empire -- one that could defeat Rome -- would surely dominate the world?

Breunor -- Well, maybe the Huns could have defeated the fifth century Romans, but maybe not. They did lose, after all!

 

[ohcrapitsnico]

@dh epic

I think you got it. I can agree with that.