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The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes who spoke the extinct Thracian language - a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family. Those peoples inhabited the Eastern, Central and Southern part of the Balkan peninsula, as well as the adjacent parts of Eastern Europe.[1] Thracians inhabited the ancient provinces of: Thrace, Moesia, Dacia, Scythia Minor, Sarmatia, Bithynia, Mysia, Macedonia, Pannonia, and other regions on the Balkans and Anatolia. This area extends over most of the Balkans region, and the Getae north of the Danube as far as beyond the Bug.[2]. The branch of science that studies the ancient Thracians and Thrace is called Thracology.
OriginsThe prehistoric origins of the Thracians remain obscure, in absence of written historical records. Evidence of proto-Thracians in the prehistoric period depends on remains of material culture. Proto-Thracian tombs can be found dating back to 3000 BC[3], when what can be termed as 'proto-Thracian' culture began to form. It is generally proposed that a proto-Thracian people developed from a mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age[4] when the latter, around 1500 BC, conquered the indigenous peoples[5]. Modern linguistics classifies the Thracians as an Indo-European people who spoke a satemized language, which links them to Albanians, Slavs, Balts and Ancient Iranian peoples. It is however disputed whether the satem languages actually descend from a later than PIE ancestor (thus forming a true satem subgroup of Indo-European) or whether satemization was caused by areal contact or parallel evolution. Links to the Greek branch (a centum language) of the Indo-European language family are also being investigated. The ethnonym Thraikios (ancient Greek for Thracian) may have the same etymology as Graikos [2]. Graikoi originally referred to a Boeotian tribe of Hellenes who became known to the Latins at an early date. The first historical record about the Thracians is found in the Iliad, where they appear as allies of the Trojans, hailing from Thrace. Classical periodBy the 5th century BC, the Thracian presence was pervasive enough to have made Herodotus (book 5) call them the second-most numerous people in the part of the world known by him (after the Indians), and potentially the most powerful, if not for their disunity. The Thracians in classical times were broken up into a large number of groups and tribes, though a number of powerful Thracian states were organized, such as the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace and the Dacian kingdom of Burebista. A type of soldier of this period called the Peltast probably originated in Thrace. 
In that period contacts between the Thracians and Classical Greece intensified which led to strengthening Greek influences in Thracian society, culture and handcrafts. Because their language had no written tradition, in some regions the Thracian aristocracy and administration adopted Classical Greek for an official language and Thracian merchants utilised it as a 'lingua franca' in their contacts with other tribes and peoples. As a result a level of Hellenization was observed in the following centuries and it was deeper imposed by the Macedonian conquests over the Thracian territory in 3rd century BC. Extinction of the ethnicity and languageSee also Dacian language, Thracian language. The ancient languages of these people had already gone extinct and their cultural influence was highly reduced due to the repeated barbaric invasions of the Balkans by Celts, Huns, Goths, and Sarmatians, accompanied by persistent hellenization, romanisation and later slavicisation. The ethnic contribution of the Thracian and Daco-Getic population, who had lived on the territory of modern Bulgaria and Romania has been long debated among the scientists during the 20th century. Some recent genetic studies suggest that these peoples have indeed made a significant contribution to the genes of these nations.[3] After they were subjugated by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great and consecutively by the Roman empire, most of the Thracians eventually became Hellenised[6] (in the province of Thrace) or Romanised (in Moesia, Dacia, etc.). The Romanised tribes of Dacia later became the ethnic substratum of the Vlach people (that first appeared in historical documents in the 10th century) who evolved into modern Romanians. In the 6th century some Thracian tribes south of the Danube river made contacts with the invading Slavs and were later Slavicised. Thus they became one of the main ethnic elements in the consolidation of the Bulgarian nation in 8-9th century. Linguistic evidence about this is the presence of Thracian and direct Latin loanwords in Old Bulgarian and modern Bulgarian language. Some scholars have proposed that present-day Albanians may be descendants of Thracian tribes who maintained their language (see also: Albanian Language). Bulgarian historianswho? also consider it possible for the Vlach and Karakachani people of Bulgaria to be descendants respectively of Romanised and Hellenised Thracian tribes.citation needed Archaeology
The archaeological research of the Thracian culture started in the 20th century and especially after World War II, mainly on the territory of Southern Bulgaria. As a result of intensive excavation works in the 1960s and 1970s a number of Thracian tombs and sanctuaries were discovered. More significant among them are: the Tomb of Sveshtari, the Tomb of Kazanlak, Tatul, Seuthopolis, Perperikon, the Tomb of Aleksandrovo, Sarmizegetusa in Romania, etc. Also a large number of elaborately crafted gold and silver treasure sets from the 5th and 4th century BC were unearthed. In the following decades those were exposed in museums around the world, thus gaining popularity and becoming an emblem of the ancient Thracian culture. Since the year 2000, Bulgarian archaeologist Georgi Kitov has made discoveries in Central Bulgaria which were summarized as "The Valley of the Thracian Kings". On 19 August 2005, some Bulgarian archaeologists announced they had found the first Thracian capital, which was situated near Karlovo in Bulgaria. A lot of polished ceramic artifacts (pieces of roof-tiles and Greek-like vases) were discovered revealing the fortune of the city. The Bulgarian Ministry of Culture declared its support to the excavations. In Dabene, Bulgaria, a cache of more than 15,000 gold Thracian artifacts were discovered, including thousands of rings. In August 2006 a sensational archaeological find was made near the village of Dubovo. A Thracian dagger made of an alloy of gold and platinum, sharp, and in perfect condition, was found in a tomb near the village of Dubovo. [4] SourcesThe Iliad records that the Thracians from around the Hellespont and also the Thracian Cicones fought on the side of the Trojans (Iliad, book II). The Odyssey records that Odysseus and his men raided Thrace on their way back home from war. Many mythical figures, such as the god Dionysus, princess Europa and the hero Orpheus were borrowed by the Greeks from their Thracian neighbours. In book 7 of his Histories, Herodotus describes the equipment of the Thracians fighting under the Persians,
In book 5, Herodotus describes the customs of various Thracian tribes.
In contrast, the Greek historian Strabo describes the Thracians living in twenty-two tribes. [7] Josephus claims the founder of the Thracians was the biblical character Tiras, son of Japheth:
Physical characteristics of the Thracians
Academic studies have concluded that Thracians had physical characteristics typical of Mediterraneans with dark eyes and hair. According to Dr. Beth Cohen, Thracians had “the same dark hair and the same facial features as the Greeks.”[8] Furthermore, Dr. Aris N. Poulianos states that Thracians like modern Bulgarians belong mainly to the Aegean athropological type.[9] Recent genetic analysis comparing DNA samples of ancient Thracian individuals with individuals from modern ethnicities place Italian, Albanian and Greek individuals in closer genetic kinship with the Thracian individuals than Romanian and Bulgarian individuals. [10] In contrast, a well-known fragment, Xenophanes comments:
The contradiction between the physical characteristics of Thracians deduced from anthropological evidence on one hand, and Xenophanes' description on the other can be accounted for by analysing the uniform Hellas tribal classification perspective regarding 'barbarians' to the north.citation needed The Greeks identified themselves as civilized, while those to the north of their classical borders were seen as Barbarians. Greeks attributed differing physical features to the so-called barbarians then they did to themselves. A recent statistical comparison [11] of ancient and modern Greek skulls resulted in the discovery of “a remarkable similarity in craniofacial morphology between modern and ancient Greeks.” Supportive of this study, American anthropologist J. Lawrence Angel [12] noted that from the earliest times to the present “racial continuity in Greece is striking.” Buxton [13] who had earlier studied Greek skeletal material and measured modern Greeks, especially in Cyprus, found that the modern Greeks “possess physical characteristics not differing essentially from those of the former [ancient Greeks].” From this evidence, including the cited works by Cohen and Poulianos, it is clear that Ancient Greeks were themselves dark haired/eyed. Thus in order to disassociate themselves from those whom they saw as inferior, Greeks often attributed fair features to the less advanced ethnic groups while idealizing black hair and brown eyes, so-called dark features, by way of poetic words melanan and melampugos that functioned as symbols of strength, civilization and intelligence.[14] The academic suggestioncitation needed is that Greeks looked upon their northern neighbours, the Thracians, as culturally inferior barbarians who were according to the Xenophanes' reference described as having the typical barbarian feature of "purros" meaning red hair and blue eyes. This implies that while the two separate academic studies conducted by Cohen and Poulianos suggest that Thracians have also had dark features, Xenophanes described them as fair, because he was conditioned to view barbarians in general as having such physical traits.citation needed Famous Thracians and Dacians
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