Minorities in Medieval Europe

[Esin]

I am familiar with the Alans but they might be a little difficult to differentiate from the Khazars in a meaningful way... although I could certainly have a group that's allied as a junior to the Kingdom of Tengria in the same way the Alans were associated with the Khazars.

[spacemonkey]

Imo, the gaps in human history are pretty interesting. For us and our history that goes back a few thousand years, the dark ages was a big blank spot. What about the gap back to the pyramids and earlier? A new discovery in Turkey (Gobeckli Tepe) is estimated to be about 10-15 thousand years old.Its like mankind has many chapters in their past. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

[Esin]

Fascinating - While admittedly there is a lot we don't know/that has been lost due to lack written documentation, we know a lot more than we get credit for I think. We actually know quite a bit about the dark ages, the idea that we don't mostly stems from Renaissance writers who had a VERY dim view of the middle ages and wanted to differentiate themselves from it by casting a dark a shade on it as possible. Admittedly life during that period was worse than during Roman periods & much knowledge was lost (at least to Europe, much of the information lived on in the Byzantine Empire and further East among Muslim populations, and was eventually brought back to Europe at least in part due to increased exposure to middle eastern culture due to the crusades.

[spacemonkey]

Sometimes I think we're getting close to another gap. Hope not though. Just a big hit to the grid would put us in a bad way fairly fast.

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[Esin]

Kalderash would also be a good name for the Gypsy population (it is an actual sub-tribal name within the Roma community centering around Ukraine region.)

Another name it would be fun to incorporate is Banderovyets a Russian slur used to describe Ukrainians after Ukrainian Nationalist/WWII Partisan Stepan Bandera.